iPhone app developers are often faced with a problem — how to quickly access and read reviews from iTunes stores in other markets. Not only is it annoying to have to get into other stores, it’s also often pointless because reviews are in other languages. AppCritics is a new iPhone app that solves these problems. It’s a simple app that allows app reviews to be accessed from App Stores around the world and translated in real-time.
At iPhone Dev Camp D.C. — Leon Palm of MagicSolver — passed around a link to an App Store review scrapper, which provides similar functionality. But AppCritics makes this process easier because an app can be searched for versus providing an application ID or iTunes Store URL.
Once selecting an app to review, AppCritics begins polling all the different App Stores and the number of reviews associated with them. The main screen also shows the link to the iPhone page, developer info, price, and the ability to favorite the app for future quick access.
By selecting one of the stores, it’s possible to start browsing the reviews. For reviews in other languages, an individual review can be translated or all can be translated with the click of a button. The translations aren’t flawless but definitely capture the essence. While my Italian and Spanish are a little rusty, I read some native language reviews and then compared to the translation to find that they were definitely good enough.
AppCritics is a great little tool, whether for a developer to track his apps, competitor apps, or generally, to be more knowledgeable about the marketplace. For $0.99, it’s well worth the download (iTunes link).
