GlobeConvert Currency & Units

OMG. What happened to this app? It USED TO BE easy to use. Suddenly today there’s constant ads I have to watch (or I can’t change any numbers) AND some idiot decided to force an on screen keyboard instead of allowing us to use our smart keyboards to type numbers or to backspace. Why do apps have to RUIN themselves out of either greed, or inability to THINK before changing designs in ways that make them less user friendly? ****after the immature, defensive and unprofessional developer response, I took a while to think about it. Because they did say the UX hasn’t changed in 10 years (this being a lesser problem than the intrusive and disruptive ads), and I have no reason to disbelieve them. Realized the problem might be that I was using the app on ipad, and I think in the past I’ve only ever used it on my phone. Updated to 3 stars because of this. This might account for the confusion of not being able to type numbers on my keyboard and having to use the screen keyboard that takes up half the screen. So, fine. I’ll delete it from ipad and use only the phone. Until the ads become even more intrusive and I just delete it entirely. Sad after using this app for years and years to find out how unpleasant and immature the app team is.

This app is very well designed and easy to use. It allows you to convert currency and various units of measurement quickly and conveniently, and the interface is clean and intuitive. However, at some point in the last year or so (I don’t know when, exactly, because I didn’t use it for a while), it introduced video ads that interrupt you in the middle of entering a number and force you to watch 10-30 seconds of irritating, bandwidth-hungry garbage. In other circumstances I would be happy to pay a reasonable fee, say $2-10, to remove the ads, because it is a genuinely good app. But here, my only options are an overpriced monthly subscription ($4/mo for a glorified calculator) or an absolutely preposterous $99 to buy it permanently. This combination of ads and absurd prices led me to delete this app entirely, and I encourage anyone reading this to find something different; nothing this app offers is even close to worth the annoyance and/or expense it demands (even though the app itself is actually good for what it is).

The best design. The favorites list is brilliant. Only one currency pair at a time so your face isn’t shoved with numbers. One suggestion is to have favorites list within the search also. See how the United Airlines app lets you save favorites within the search itself. Most of us have 5-6 currencies we’d like to save on there. Another useful feature is to rotate the favorites list automatically by putting the last used on top. That way your recently used pairs will stay at or near the top.