After a long absence in the AppStore I can joyfully announce that a new application has been submitted to Apple and should get approved any time now. The new application called My Viking is an app targeted at customers of the Belgian Mobile Vikings mobile phone operator. It allows customers to check their balance and consult the call/top-up history. All of this in a clean interface based on the default iPhone OS look & feel. Did I mention the app will be a free download and has English, Dutch & French localization?
Although several similar applications are available in the AppStore, I still pulled through and made the app since scratching your itch is a great way of making a good product.
My Viking has some distinguishing features, multiple accounts support being one of them. I won’t ask why you need it, whether to check your iPhone and iPad balance or to spy on your significant other, just know you can.
Another obvious feature, which surprisingly no other Mobile Vikings iPhone app to my knowledge has, is the cross-referencing of numbers in the call history with the iPhones address book. Instead of showing the phone number, the contacts name is displayed when found in the address book.
The last distinguishing feature is the analysis screen, this screen tries to give some meaning to your remaining balance by showing how many minutes you can call and/or text messages you can send. It also makes a prediction how many/much text messages and data you’ll have left at the end of the bundle. So you know whether to step up your text messaging rate or start slowing down.
While there are certainly some areas where the app can be improved, the call history only displays today for instance, this 1.0 release is “good enough” & postponing the release even more made no sense. The core functionality is implemented and I intend to improve/extend the app whenever I have time. Suggestions, questions and bugs may be mailed to me using the appropriate button in the extra screen.
When the app gets approved, I’ll post a new post with the link. [Edit: it's available, see next blog post]
My Viking can also be followed on Twitter: @myvikingapp.