Some applications do one thing really well. Some apps do lots of things quite nicely. The recently added Dilbert app in the Ovi Store is thankfully the former. This is a wonderful little application – it's not a cheap cash-in (the app is actually free to download and use) and has everything you'd expect from an official application... even if this isn't, it's a worthwhile piece of coding and a good model to use for other online comic strip artists. Read on for screenshots and comments.

My first thought was that this was going to be one of the many RSS “Build Your Own Ovi Apps” - not that this would have been dismissed, because an RSS feed for the Dilbert cartoons in a decent viewer would be very useful. But this is a custom application not just for the most recent Dilbert cartoon, but exploring the extensive archive of Scott Adams' creation as well.

When you open the application, you are presented with today's cartoon, the same one that is shipped out to newspapers and publishers around the world. The regular three page strip actually has four panels – the last panel each day is a handy reminder to go visit the Dilbert website – and you can move through the strip either by touching the representative boxes at the bottom of the screen or (and this is much more tactile and sensible) flicking the touchscreen to move along the strip.

The load time of the app and each cartoon is probably my only bugbear. It's incredibly long and I wonder if optimising how it all loads into RAM and calls up the most recent cartoon could be tweaked for more perceived speed.

As well as the daily cartoon, you have access to the extensive online archive of Dilbert cartoons, either stepping backwards and forward day by day, by week or by a monthly calendar. It's good, but again the loading speed issue rears its head. You have to love the “random Dilbert” option as well, that's proving to be the best way to jump around the archive, and when you land on one of the series of strips that link together then the next day/previous day buttons become page turners.

It would be nice to see some sort of search, and if that were available, along with a little bit of polish and speed in the application, I'd say that the developers should consider moving this to a paid-for application. But I'm not complaining that it's a free download right now.

There's a group of people that think comics on mobiles will be big – Sony have invested in a full comic book reader on the PSP for example, but these are mostly geared towards the multi-page comics such as 2000 AD or Commando. I think that more bite-sized comics, such as Dilbert, are far better suited to smartphones than the latest Rouge Trooper, and this app is a great one to model the interface on. Now to see if anyone else picks up the gauntlet.

Download the Dilbert application via the Ovi Store.

-- Ewan Spence, June 2010.