Cineworld makes a film listing iPhone app: is it better than Google Mobile?
Wondering if you can catch a late-night showing of Inception? Cineworld have become the first British cinema chain to release an iPhone app that lists times of showings and lets you buy tickets. It’s a free app, on sale from today that lists all films in Cineworld’s 72 UK cinemas.
Features:
– use the app to find the cinemas nearby
– buy tickets online
– share the information easily with friends
– see trailers, and details of upcoming releases.
Limitations
– the app only covers cineworld cinemas, they might not be your closest ones.
Does Google do a better service?
It’s only reasonable to point out that Google do a very good film listing service too on their mobile site, that covers all cinemas and lets you search by film and by your location. However, the advantage that the Cineworld app has over this free service is just that it will let you buy tickets in advance so you needn’t worry about getting turned away from the popular shows. That’s not always possible with the showings listed on the Google site.
Interestingly, Cineworld opened up their API to third party developers so look out for people building on it to develop more useful conglomerate apps. Currently only available for iPhone iOS4, it’s coming to OS3 soon, they also have a mobile site that can be accessed by any phone with an internet browser.
