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.
I’ll check your app out for sure!
Cos i find the app that I have now (Mobile Vikings) a lil basic.
And I thought that there was only 1 app
nice nice but i would name it differend… There are like 4 or 5 apps calles my viking… I use 2 of them myself… So think about it
The 3 Mobile Vikings applications currently available in the AppStore are the official one called Mobile Vikings and 2 unofficial ones called MyVikings & iViking.
When logged in on the Mobile Vikings website, the personal area with your info is called My Viking, it’s the official naming just like Telenet has the Telemeter. Hence I chose it as application name, after checking with Mobile Vikings whether I was allowed to use it.
What other name would you suggest Karol?
Has it been submitted to all App Stores (read international), or only to the Belgian one? As some of the users (including myself) only use the US Store this could potentially be a problem.
@Elettoz
I thought all the apps that are in local app store’s (Non US) where also in the US store…
@Elettoz: It has been submitted for the Belgian AppStore, once it has been approved & everything is working fine, I’ll add more countries. Specifically thinking about US & NL.
@Alpacatje: To my knowledge that is not true. Be Tv for instance was only available in the Belgian store & I’ve heard some people complain about it not being available in the US store. I haven’t checked, but when releasing an app you can select like a zillion countries, I’m sure the US was one of them.
@Yannick Thanks! Looking forward
to it! Keep us posted…
First of all: excellent app! Thanx
Somewhere I read that I could leave some suggestions, so here is one
- store and display the last found data. Sometimes I drive abroad, switch off roaming. Then, at some point, I wonder what my credit was….
Hi Yannick, are there any plans to build an iPad app? I love the way it works on the iPhone, but it doesnt look great on the iPad. I have 2 accounts, and it would be nice if I could check my status on the iPad aswell.
Greetings,
Jonas
I currently have no plans for an iPad app, I’m focusing on extending/polishing the iPhone app. Although an iPad app does intrigue me to be honest, so I’m definitely not ruling it out. Once I own an iPad myself, the iPad version could even jump to the top of the priorities list.