theChive – official Android app for social video, photo & animated GIF site
by Paul Wilks
Apr 2, 2012 11:38 AM –
Install
theChive is a busy social website chock full of videos, GIFs and photo sets. This is their official Android app, which features up-to-date posts and access to streaming video, galleries, comments and sharing. The UI is pretty neat and you can login via your Facebook to comment yourself.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: High Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Lots of content!
- Easy to navigate!
- Search by category, top rated, buzz and latest content!
- Easy to share or download!
Cons
- Crashes regularly.
- Some content takes ages to load, even on a strong Wi-Fi connection.
- Site contains GIFs, but app doesn’t support them.
Features:
theChive is a busy community website that hosts videos, pictures and GIFs. It’s typically viral content of cool, quirky, weird or awesome things. The official app initially looks pretty good and, although it kinda skimps on the administration a little (for example, it only tells you about being able to log in via Facebook when you decide you want to comment, etc.) there is clearly lots of content that is regularly updated. The app lets you simply and easily share or download the images or stream the videos. You can also comment and like. All this interaction is relatively slick and it’s a mostly easy to use app.
I have not heard of theChive before I saw the app, but I can see why it’s popular. The main site looks pretty cool and is always very active with new submissions. The app, however, falls down in a few different ways. Firstly, it crashes a lot. Initially I thought it might just have been my device, but checking with Google Play Store comments I can see it affects many users. While GIFs are very popular on the main website, they are seemingly unsupported here so you’ll miss out on these by purely using the app (I believe this is an issue with Android operating system not supporting these file types). Finally, I noticed that some content takes forever to load, even on my very strong Wi-Fi connection.
This all makes for a sporadic experience, sometimes it works really well- you can stream videos and download cool pics. At other times it crashes badly and refuses to load pictures. I think the app is still relatively new, but I’d recommend using some caution until these kind of issues are resolved.
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The Chive – Menu
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The Chive – Categories
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The Chive – Video view
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The Chive – Scroll through videos
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The Chive – Album thumbnail view
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The Chive – Best photos of the week
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The Chive – Picture list
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The Chive – Picture view
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The Chive – Picture view 2
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The Chive – Easily flick through albums
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The Chive – Comments
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The Chive – Vote for content you like
Usefulness:
If you use the site already, or like exploring sites for funny pictures or video content, theChive is a good resource. The app splutters a lot but with persistence you an find some neat stuff. It’s not personally my kind of thing, but if you like sharing content, there’s lots to check out here.
Ease of Use:
Aside from the sign in issue I mentioned earlier- why not just have a settings page or something?- it’s quite easy to use. Most community-based apps have far more options- sign in, save to favourites, read/watch/view it later, etc. but these are all missing in theChive’s app. So it might be worth concluding that, yes, it is easy to use but more through lack of options than by design.
Frequently Used:
If you use theChive website this might be something you use fairly regularly. It often force closes so might be frustrating for the more casual user. The app updates on an hourly basis so there’s always lots of fresh content to view.
Interface:
The interface is pretty good really, and would be better if photo sets, etc. loaded properly- you often just see circular loading icons everywhere. This aside it mostly functions well. It’s nowhere near the same league as robust, slick and gorgeous looking community apps like OnSports, but it’s certainly not the worst app out there.