OMG Texting Dictionary: WTF is that, anyway?

Texting has long been attached to the idea of quick, incomplete sentences sent from phone to phone well before Twitter came into being. The restraint of 140 characters kept these messages short and sweet for the longest time. Thus, a texting language grew that employed letter and number combintations which stood for more complex words and phrases. OMG Texting Dictionary works to help define these ambiguous terms in an app so folks out of the loop could potentially understand.

Main Screen

Upon initially opening the app, you’re greeted with the beginning of a long list of abbreviations, a search bar, and a button to purchase a corresponding book. Each abbreviation listed includes the real meaning and a button to share with others. Tapping either the listing or button takes you to the same screen: the same thing, yet a Share button is replaced with three specific sharing buttons: Email, Facebook, and Twitter. Searching does exactly as it should, bringing up relevant results to your search criteria.

Overall, I feel both overwhelmed and underwhelmed with the app. For most people who would want to know what these txt abbreviations are, they want to know how it came about and context clues on how to use it; much like a real dictionary. There’s no grouping or condensed browsing option either (like that found in Txtpedia). If you wants to look up any useful abbreviations that are at the end of the alphabet, you basically have to keep swiping and pressing the Load More button. There’s plenty of content but it’s not very well laid out.

View of a single abbreviation

The biggest hurt of all: the app is 14.4 MB. To put it in perspective, this is actually a larger app than Bejeweled 2 (weighing in at 9.8 MB). I would be more understanding if the content matched the size, however the app basically consists of text, a few buttons, and some proprietary styling. This seems to cause the app to move pretty sluggish and swiping to scroll hangs and hiccups a lot.

My recommendation is to keep with Internet searches. There’s plenty of resources online that you can save as a web app to your homescreen or bookmark in Safari. Otherwise, feel free to use and abuse the iPhone’s corrective typing and just say it the way you’re saying it inside of your head.

Cost: $0.99

What I thought in a nutshell!
Use-ability
How user friendly is the app and its interface?
Practicality
How likely is it that someone is going to use it?
Neat Factor
Will this app wow you?

Overall
How did it fair overall?