Review: Text Vision app Almost Delivers

We recently reviewed the Type n Walk app for the iPhone and were not too impressed.  Another app has caught our eye promising what Type n Walk failed to deliver.  Fortunately we were not disappointed twice, however what Text Vision (App Store) promises is not what is delivered.

Once you download this 99 cent app, the iPhone opens with a video feed from the iPhones camera.  The screen has a transparent text box in the top third.  At the top are two boxes for phone number and email address.  You can also access your contact list using the blue plus sign.  At the bottom of the screen are icons:  settings which gives you an about for Text Vision with a brief how-to,  a manage accounts which allows you to log in to Facebook and Twitter (which you will have to do in advance if you want to post your text as a status message on either utility).

There is a camera icon which gives you the option to take a picture or choose a picture from your camera roll to add to your post.  Once you have chosen or taken your picture it shows up in a tiny thumbnail at the bottom of your text input window.  You have the option to removed the picture and take another before sending.  There is another camera icon on the bottom of the text input box as well as a character counter.  Tweets cannot exceed 140 characters and the Facebook status is a bit longer but not much.

Returning to the bottom icons, you can bring up options to post to Facebook or Twitter or both.  The remaining icon gives you the option to send your post as a text or to send as email.  However these options are NOT seamless.  They will turn off the Text Vision camera and  go into your SMS and you will have to restart Text Vision to get back into it.  Sending email from the text box is a bit faster as it copies the text and will allow you to move back and forth quickly.  You can even send photos quickly via email with this method.  Apparently no app on the App Store will allow you to send a text directly from the app itself, because it not allowed by Apple yet. Any app that does send texts from the app is sending it from their own server.

The downside of this application obviously then is that it cannot seamlessly text and view where you are going at the same time.  It does however give you the capabilities to seamlessly Facebook and Twitter while walking, and almost email too.  Rather ironic considering the app is called Text Vision.

Rating 4/5

Text Vision (iTunes Link) is available in the App Store for $0.99 as of this writing.

This is an app review article by The Apps Machine

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