Smartify: Arts and Culture

Sounded like a great app. I used the widget thinking I would see new works of art every day and have an opportunity to explore diverse artists and pieces. However, the widget algorithm seemed fixated on and promoted one artist who I would see invariably 80% of the time both on my iPhone and on my iPad when I looked at the widget, a Kristina Belkina. I didn't find her works that remarkable to justify that, especially when there's a world of great art out there. I actually wrote to Smartify and commented on this through their email link. I never heard back; no response or explanation. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited a month to see if things would change, and it only seemed to get worse. I deleted the app today and, of course, the widget with it. Curious, I've read some of the other reviews here with many complaining about the scanning feature, which is a primary feature and what they promote when advertising their app. As an artist, I would never lean into a bias towards one particular artist, unless it was a featured artist of the month or some such thing. I call this bad form on the part of Smartify and it wouldn't take much for them to do better.

I like this app! The scanner works, I get to save my favorite paintings and artists… many paintings come with a blurb, even shows where they’re on display, plus the app looks good :) The search function did take me a few tries to figure out. Say I look up Monet, then Fragonard, the app would search for Fragonard in Monet works 😅

Used at Taliesin West - headphones are required for the audio tour, but the app would switch the audio from AirPods to speaker when it switched “tracks” at every station. Maybe the app tried to force set set wired headphones even though we were using airpods?? Happened 16 times on both my iPhone 12 and my wife’s SE v2 - we each have AirPods Pro (v1). Report a problem in the App Store also does not work -app cannot be selected from recent purchases, so the ‘next’ prompt never goes active.