The Wikimedia Foundation has finally released a Wikipedia standalone app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Distributed for free via the iTunes App Store, Wikipedia Mobile is described as focusing on simplicity and speed. While Wikipedia Mobile is, indeed, simple and easy to use, the app doesn’t award the latter account. Not in this initial release, anyway.

Wikipedia Mobile does look like it’s tailored for the iPhone, but the Wikipedia.org website is almost just as optimized for the Apple device, and it’s considerably faster than the new application. With Wikipedia Mobile, loading a term like “Apple Inc.” can take up to 13 seconds over a strong Wi-Fi connection, while some portions of the page (statistic tables, or other wide-oriented objects) may not be displayed properly.

Optimizations for the device are observable on the formatting front, with sub-categories like “history,” “culture,” “criticism” and “references” appearing as buttons, in order to save memory.

The touchscreen response (scrolling) is fast, I’ll give it that, but zooming and other multi-touch features are not enabled. No suggestions are offered either, when doing a search – a crucial feature for search-based apps. The iPhone OS, however, will suggest correcting the term “Apple inc” with “Apple Inc.” Also, the forward arrow doesn’t work (at least not on my phone).

But, despite its sluggish performance and lack of a Bookmarks feature, Wikipedia Mobile is convenient and useful, if only just for that daily featured article. Today’s topic, for instance, was the Emperor Penguin, which I have learned is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species. OK, so today’s topic was not all that fascinating, but I’ve made my a point.

Also, if Wikipedia Mobile’s developers come across this review, I’d like to make a suggestion – a little color here and there wouldn’t kill anyone. I get that Wikipedia is white-themed so we can focus on the text and all that, but, as an iPhone app, it would be a heck of a lot more attractive sporting some faint-colored backgrounds, buttons, etc. Just a thought.

Download Wikipedia Mobile via iTunes (Free) (requires iPhone or iPod touch; iPhone OS 3.0; Internet connection)

Review information

- Application: Wikipedia Mobile; - Developer: Wikimedia Foundation; - Version reviewed: 0.1; - Review device: first-generation iPhone (8GB) running iPhone OS 3.0.1; - Internet connection: Wi-Fi.