Experience HIFA on mobile this year: Android app now available

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HIFA Android App

HIFA Android AppA post on Facebook by local web & mobile app development company, C2 Media, just announced that an Android app for Zimbabwe’s biggest arts festival, HIFA is now live. The app is free. For many lovers of the annual festival (those on Android at least) this solves a huge information pain. In past years festival goers had to buy the festival programme magazine and basically move around with it during the festival week. Or download a pdf, print it etc…

Non-Androiders are not forgotten, apparently an IOS app will be coming soon, and maybe a biNu app too for those on feature phones. Mxit app as well? Nokia app? How so fragmented this whole mobile ecosystem is! Anyway, we haven’t downloaded the app yet, so those of you do that do first, please share with us how much it helps with planning which HIFA shows to attend.

10 comments

  1. beatnyama

    I’ve just installed the app and ran it through its paces. What follows below are my views. I’m also an app developer for Android and Windows Phone, so advice is thrown in there as well.

    The gud
    The app is fast clean and does what its supposed to do. Which is show you whats going to be happening at HIFA. That it does pefectly well. It also has a nice map showing the different items of interest. It has a has a Twitter feed, but i’m not sure what the feed is about, which tags are monitored and so on.

    It also has the programme itself. This programme is displayed as the first item when the app loads. It took me some time to realise the numbers are actually dates. Maybe i’m slow. You click on the number (the date) and the programme for that day is displayed. Which is all good.

    Issues:

    First of all the app is 24Mb. I develop mobile apps with lots of functions and they rarely ever go above 5MB even for the graphic heavy ones. I found the 24Mb to be rather too big. Lucky i was on WiFi, otherwise i was going to have to skip the download.

    One annoying thing i noticed about the app are the adverts on the programme. All line items on the programme are separated by an advert. Advertising in your app is ok, as long as the ads are not intrusive. These ads were intrusive and distracting me from the job of reading the program. They should think about removing a few of these ads.

    Over a usage period of 5-10 minutes the app crashed on me twice. I submitted the crash data to the developers lets hope they look into it. I’m more forgiving about crashes as some of my apps just act funny when installed on a different phone configuration.

    Besides this, its rather a good effort. I like the direction of app development in Zim

    1. Tawanda Katsaruware

      True, it is pretty huge for an app thats not a game. Doubtful that many will use their airtime for this download.

      And yes, it does crash a bit too often. Im sure they will fix this in future updates

      Good app tho!

      1. Farai Sairai

        Will give it a bash today

    2. beatnyama

      They seem to have pushed out an update already. That’s fast. Lets hope they tested it enough

    3. Time

      Oh my 24mb!? Why?…Even my complete bible app with 3 different versions wasn’t nearly that big :O

      Hope they can somehow reduce the size as the cost of downloading the app on an econet connection may end up being just the same cost of buying the actual physical hifa program but with the added risk of it crashing just when you need it most.

      Oh and the Ads too…I used the Umax finder app I think made by C2 and those econet ads seemed a bit large and indeed intrusive.

  2. spitfire

    just downloaded the app- most definitely helpful undoubtedly necessary- map feature is cool as well. my download was about 10mb- still considerably large. more information on pricing, ticket availability and the ability to buy the tickets provided thru the same platform would make the app top notch. 6/10

  3. Future

    Create your own iPhone application for HIFA with NO coding necessary. http://www.appsbar.com/

  4. Tawanda Katsaruware

    It appears they have trimmed the app down to 7.1MB. Much better. From a developer point of view, i wonder what was constituting the other 17MB, specially since they managed to trim it down in a day and still get it working.

  5. Nerudo Mregi

    Installed on both the Galaxy Tab and the S2 looks pretty. Not one to complain about the file size, only got it now and the file size is now down to 7MB. Still big in a way for what It does. If the file size went from 24 to 7 quite reasonable.

    First idea I think makes sense. Finally a team building a relevant product.

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