iPhone App Spotlight: Flixter and Fandango

by Aggro Me on June 23, 2009

The other day I realized I didn’t have an app to check showtimes for movies and buy tickets, so I ended up having to use Safari to do it and that was hardly optimal. So I grabbed the Fandango and Flixster apps (both free).  Flixster’s app is actually called “Movies” but I”m going to refer to it as Flixster because Movies is confusing when you’re writing about movie apps. I figured they would end up being pretty much exactly the same…but I was wrong.  Fandango is much better at the core functionality, but Flixster has some nice features that Fandango doesn’t.  If I could add the good features from Fandango to Flixster I’d be set.  But overall, Fandango just blows Flixster away.  Since my comparison is crazily long, I’ll sum it up here:

  • Fandango sold tickets to 10 out of 10 of the closest theaters to me playing Hangover. Flixster sold tickets to one.  Two movies differed on each app’s list of 10 but Fandango sold tickets to the two theaters Flixster included in the top ten (Fandango had them a bit lower on the list).  Flixter did not.
  • I looked for showtimes for two obscure movies.  Fandango showed that each was playing in a theater in Manhattan. Flixster had the movies playing in zero theaters.
  • Fandango let’s you purchase tickets right from the app and can store your credit card.  Flixster opens Safari and takes you to MovieTickets.com, which is ridiculous.
  • Flixster has some features that Fandango could really use: searching and sorting the list of movies, snippets of reviews and average scores from users and Rotten Tomatoes.  They also provide a link to the IMDB page for each movie and more basic info on each movie.
  • Flixster has a bunch of advertisements and they are really annoying ones too.  Fandango is ad free.
  • Fandango’s launch page is more useful because it shows the movies playing in your area, while Flixster shows a general list of movies.
  • Flixster does not utilize GPS, as Fandango does.  You have to enter your zip.
  • Flixster has a lot of social networking features and Facebook connectivity and Fandango doesn’t.

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