Should it stay or should it go?

The Web Apps

Here’s a list of apps that I’ve deleted and replaced with home screen bookmarks to their relevant mobile website or web app with comments where appropriate:

  • Twitter – including setting up text alerts for mentions from users I follow and direct messages to replace the lack of notifications.
  • Facebook – a very similar interface with the added functionality of displaying today’s events/birthdays at the top of the screen.
  • Google+ - I’m not a huge user so I’m not even sure I’ll notice I’ve made the change!
  • GMail – I’ve been using the GMail app rather than the native Mail app on the iPhone because I prefer being able to use my labels in the Google-intended way. The biggest downside to the web app as far as I can see is the lack of badge icon for the unread count (although this may turn out to be a positive!).
  • BBC News - With their recent move to a responsive design I’ve got high hopes for their mobile site.
  • Met Office - This is the one I’m most worried about. No location-finding services so I’ve had to resort to a bookmark to the local 5 day forecast.
  • Dropbox - This was a tough call as the offline-sync for starred documents is something I’ve used in the past. However, their web interface seems to be well thought out so I’m going to give it a go.

The Native Apps

The apps that survived the cull and why (excluding the Apple default apps which you can’t remove):

  • Path - They don’t have a web interface at all, mobile or otherwise, for interacting with your account, only for viewing individual posts.
  • Google Authenticator - For two-step verification of my Google account
  • Spotify - No alternative web app. I’m not even sure if they could successfully provide the service they do using HTML5 and the browser? (Anybody out there with any thoughts on this?).
  • ESV Bible – They claim to have a web app on their website but it just seems to forward to their default (not responsive) desktop website. The need for full offline access also helped swing this one.
  • Prompt - SSH Client. Even if it were possible I’d be concerned about the security of using a web app to SSH into things.
  • South East England OS Maps - No mobile web alternative and offline access an issue here too.
  • OnSong – Offline access to chord sheets (and there’s no mobile web alternative anyway).
  • Kindle - No alternative, although this is less of an issue since I got a Kindle.
  • TubeMap - For the obvious reason of offline access. I considered download a PDF but the app updates when stations are closed etc. without me having to remember to download the updates PDF.
  • Skype - For obvious reasons…
  • Sky+ and Sky Cloud WiFi - No alternative. Accessing the desktop versions of these services on a mobile device is painful.
  • QR Scanner - To my knowledge there isn’t a web app alternative? I’m happy to be proved wrong though.
  • Move the Box and Flower Board - I couldn’t quite bring myself to remove all the games from my iPhone and these are the only two I play regularly at the moment anyway.

I had a *lot* of other apps installed but I really didn’t use the other that often, if at all, so they’ve gone. Quite a few of them have alternative web apps or mobile websites so if I find myself needing to use their services I’ll give them a go as and when but I didn’t feel that any of them need to feature on my home screen(s).  If nothing else, I’ve gained nearly 2gb of storage back!

My Rightmove friends will notice that the Rightmove app or mobile interface doesn’t feature in either of these lists. Most of my Rightmove searching tends to happen on a desktop with the occasional iPad use so I’m going to see how I go with just using the web interface in Safari on my iPhone as and when I need it.

Going Web App only

On Wednesday night, for reasons I’m still not clear on, I decided to spend the evening using Twitter’s mobile web app through the browser on my iPhone rather than one of the native apps that I usually use.  To my surprise I found the interface quite attractive and using the application felt quicker and more responsive than the native apps that I’m used to and began to think seriously about removing the various Twitter apps from my phone and adding the Twitter web app as a bookmark to my home screen.  A few minutes later, I’d added the Twitter web app to my home screen but chickened out when it come to removing the native apps.  But the seed has been planted…

Thursday morning and I’m on a train to Oxford, getting frustrated by my native Twitter app struggling with my 3g connection. Frustrated, I hit the home button and scroll right to my web app bookmark. To my surprise (again!), the page opens and relatively quickly (certainly quicker than the native app) and the latest tweets in my timeline are displayed on my screen, ready to read. Of course this could just be down to hitting a decent patch of 3g coverage but the seed from last night had started sprouting and I remembered Doug Belshaw’s blog post Platforms as standards? 10 days with the Nokia N9. And so came my second tweet…

Which takes us to today, Friday,  where I am sitting with 2gb more space on my iPhone because I’ve just removed the majority of native apps and a home screen full of bookmarks to web apps.  From today, for at least a month, I’m going to attempt to just use the web app versions of native apps that I use on my iPhone (where web apps or mobile web interfaces are available).*  I’m keeping the native apps on my iPad and it will be interesting to see whether this move increases my use of my iPad over my iPhone or whether this move leads me to having a similar cull on my iPad.

In my next post I’m going to detail which native apps have gone and which have stayed (and why) and some first impressions, but I’m keen to hear from anyone who has taken a similar approach or your views on how I might fare in my “browser-only” world.