Yesterday evening we uploaded the first public beta of our Google Android mobile application to the Android Market.
This is the first Irish Android application and one of the very first reviewing applications on the platform.
You'll have to patiently wait for the launches of the HTC Magic and Samsung I7500 before  most Irish people can try it out. Anyone living in countries where Android is already live can install it now.
If you aren't familiar with Android, it is a new mobile platform created by Google and about to be launched on a plethora of phones by most of the major manufacturers. The first phone, the HTC G1, was launched in the US and UK initially and the HTC Magic is currently being launched in many European countries.
Our application is all about writing and finding reviews when you are out and about with your Android phone. It makes full use of cell-tower location and GPS to give you the reviews you need for where you are now.
In addition to finding reviews written on our www site and Android, you can also browse/search reviews from our partners and clients. That includes reviews of many of Roomex's 20,000 hotels, Puddleducks outdoor gear, Klipsch audio products and Bubble Brothers wines.
The application is also available in white-label OEM form and would be an ideal pre-install for many networks!
We'd like to thank our development partners in this release. Marino Software in Dublin did the Android work and we recommend them to anyone for both Android and iPhone development. Yazzgoth in Cork continues to do a great job building out our API and business services using their expertise in Python and Django. Note that the Android App uses the same API available to our business customers and shows just how powerful it is.
If you have an Android phone, we'd love to hear what you think. You can find it as "LouderVoice Reviews" in the Lifestyle section of the Market on your phone.
If you don't have an Android phone, trust us, you're going to want one, it's a fantastic system, particularly if you use GMail, GCal, GTalk etc. This will be the biggest mobile platform ever released.
In the meantime, if you want to have a look at our application in action, you should check-out the fantastic video review that Cathal Garvey made of it yesterday. Thanks Cathal! We'll upload some screencasts of our own next week too.
Tags: android, hreview, htc g1, htc magic, LouderVoice, mobile, o2 ireland, reviews, vodafone ireland
Congratulations Conor, excellent news after the years of hard word you guys have put in. For years I was a loyal Nokia user and then switched to Sony Ericsson with my last phone. The good thing is that broke my allegiance to any manufacturer and now I find myself strangely brand agnostic. So, going by your regular recommendations alone I'm very much thinking of changing to Android next. Probably with the HTC Magic. In which case LouderVoice will be my first install for sure. Keep up the great work.
Appreciate it James, thanks.
Android is by no means perfect but it works the way I do, which is all I ask for.
The Samsung phone looks like the ideal replacement for an N95-8GB, it's just a pity they didn't give it a G1 style keyboard. Nokia with their lacklustre N97 must be very worried indeed.
Why Android and not iPhone, or is there an iPhone app coming?
Good question! Basically there are hundreds of reviewing apps for iPhone at this stage so getting noticed now is almost impossible. In comparison, there are less than ten on Android.
Add to this the fact that Android will be on billions of phones eventually whilst iPhone keeps its valuable niche market share and it just makes more sense for us to follow the growth.
However if Android is a roaring success for us, then we will almost definitely do iPhone as the same developers can re-spin quite quickly.
Makes sense to follow where you think the market will go to. What's your current iPhone v Android userbase on the site at the moment - if more current users are iPhone based they are very likely to download and talk about the app - thereby giving you a headstart on visibility in the app store. Just a thought.
Good point but right now we have minimal main-site traffic on either iPhone or Android. Firefox and IE7 on PC rule the roost! So we are really starting from scratch with mobile app userbase.
Anyone know when Android is coming to Ireland?
[...] the first Android application released out of Ireland. Tagged with the same name as the company, LouderVoice for Android is a business review application that lets you find and write reviews of restaurants, bars and [...]
@JP
Haven't heard yet JP despite asking via multiple routes. I'd be surprised if it didn't appear over the summer.
[...] Brothers are delighted to be using the LouderVoice review widget on our site. Each of our products has a review box beneath it, which is linked to the LouderVoice [...]
[...] As per the Loudervoice blog, Loudervoice worked with Irish development partners - Marino Software in Dublin and Yazzgoth in Cork. [...]
[...] apps on the store? Is that the reason for the €5? Google charged us nothing to put the “LouderVoice Reviews” for Android app up on the [...]
[...] Then we launched Ireland’s first Google Android Mobile application [...]
Whelp, we've reached the Autumn ... any more leaks on when the HTC Magic might be available in Ireland?
Hi Brendan,
The leak on the voda site about the N97-Mini turned out to be totally accurate and the same leak mentioned Android for September, so fingers crossed. Having said that, none of my moles have heard a single solitary word about Android inside any of the operators which is worrying.