Atlas by Collins™ app review: a pocket-sized atlas

Introduction

Atlas by Collins™ by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd is a reference app that is a complete atlas for you that will give you all the information you need about the globe. There are nine different themed globes that you can use, all of which deliver specific information. It can help students with their studies or just provide you with general knowledge about the world. The app was updated on June 6, 2013 and is available in English.

User Experience

After numerous tries of trying to launch the app and crashing each time, it finally loaded. There seems to be some bugs with this app that many users are experiencing. As well it is advised that you have a good quality WiFi connection when you download additional globes. The app is a bit confusing to navigate and you will quickly see there aren't many free features here; most items you'll need to pay for in order to use/view.

Features

Features of this app include a satellite map, political maps, physical maps, environmental maps, population maps, energy maps, and communication maps. New for the app are economy and development statistics and content provided by the World Bank. The maps are all color-coded for ease of use.

You can view maps offline, zoom in on a particular location, discover the more than 200,000 locations, and even research country profiles.

For information that interests you go ahead and share it by email or on social media. As well you can switch between viewing it on the iPhone and iPad without losing your place.

In-App Purchases

There are a variety of in-app purchases, all of which are different globes. They range in price from $0.99 to $1.99.

Update Info

Version 2.0 features an in-app store where you can purchase additional gloves, updated gazeteer and country information, the ability to restore your purchases, enhanced screenshot sharing, minor bug fixes, performance improvements, and better handling of clustered data points when you are zoomed in tight.

Customer Ratings and Feedback Comments

The current version of this app has 14 customer ratings with an average rating of 2.5 out of five stars. Unfortunately this app fails to impress the majority of users who were not happy about the amount of in-app purchases needed or the bug and crash issues. Additionally, users are displeased with the latest update and the lack of information it provided.

Personal Comments by Reviewer

I found the app very frustrating to use right from the start since it kept crashing on me each time I tried to launch it. Once I finally was able to open it I was left disappointed by the lack of free features/tools and I found while you were using it the response time was slow and stuttered quite a bit.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Provides you with an atlas of the entire world
• Offers a variety of maps that focus on different elements
• You can zoom in on the maps/globes

Cons

• Is suffering from bug issues
• Requires many in-app purchases; there isn’t much available for free
   

For: iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPod touch (4th generation), iPod touch (5th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation), iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, iPad (4th generation), iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular (4th generation), iPad mini, and iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular with iOS 5.1 or later. Atlas by Collins™ is optimized for iPhone 5.