As well as the BBC’s underwhelming Olympics app, there’s also an official app from Games organisers LOCOG – famed for terrorising small shops with their over zealous brand protection rules, and scaring Londoners away from enjoying the Games they’ve paid for.
The free app offers news and results from all Olympic sports plus medal wins, biogs and London 2012 results for each athlete and a calendar of sports fixtures which lets you set reminders – a nice touch.
Unlike the BBC’s effort, this app does make use of the iPad’s larger screen and provides bright, colourful imagery to illustrate text content.
We’ve reviewed the app ahead of the Games starting and at this time there’s no sign of it offering video content.
The app feels well designed and fluid but LOCOG have failed to customise the text content. The result is articles which invite the audience to click non-working links to view other content such as schedules for a given sport and the full media release the story is based on. That lack of attention to detail is unforgivable.
It’s not clear that this app will offer much beyond the news, coverage and results media outlets will be providing but it’s nice to see it stored in a single, easy to use app.
London 2012: Official Results App for the Olympic and Paralympic Games is available from iTunes.
Our verdict: 3/5