Appadvisor

For my first review I have chosen to examine Starhub and their mobile application Happy Prepaid. The app is for anyone with a Starhub prepaid account and it enables you to manage your subscription. Through the Happy Prepaid app you can view your credit and data balance, set up phone for roaming, add different types of plans and scroll through different promotions. I personally use this app frequently and from a utility perspective I think the app relieves a lot of everyday pains. The features I use the most is checking my data balance, topping up my credit balance and buying new data plans. The Happy Prepaid app meets my demands and it has the functions most people use and need. Information-wise the app does it's job. However, I have a few concerns regarding the interface and responsiveness of the app. More on that later.

The pictures above are screenshots from my most frequently used features of the app. The homepage, data purchase site and the credit top up site. To reach the main menu, you press the lines in the upper right corner and a list of every available feature shows up. In the bottom of the page you have shortcuts for easier access. What I like about the interface is it's user friendliness and it's ease of use. Unfortunately, that's about it. Even though the app is regularly updated (every month or two) it's obvious that design is not Starhub's main concern. The user interface reminds me of an app from a different era. It reminds me of apps I used to have on my iPhone 3GS, and anyone who is fairly known with iPhone's know that that was a long time ago. I can't understand why the display size of the app is fixed to a small screen, instead of dynamically adjusted to the actual screen size. As you can see in the example pictures above, a lot of space is just blacked out because of this. It's not something you usually see in today's apps, and especially not in well-known and widespread apps like Happy Prepaid. This together with the lack of responsiveness brings down my overall impression of the app.

All in all, Starhub's Happy Prepaid app is OK. It has all the functionalities I could think of using and it's easy to use. Downside of it is however obvious, it needs some reconstruction and a serious interface update in order to keep up with today's customer expectations.

Review by Jakob Schub