Problem Halved for iPhone Has A Problem

Problem Halved [rating: 2/5]

The premise of the app Problem Solved is that “A problem shared is a problem halved”, although I’ve always thought that depending on who you tell, it could be a problem tripled or even quadrupled! So the app is a repository of user supplied answers to questions also supplied by other app users.

Problem Halved will allow people from around the globe to give you suggestions to help you solve your problems. You can post a problem or answer a problem – or do both – a problem shared is a problem halved, so don’t go it alone!

Before you can do anything you have to create an account which consists of username, password and email, you can also add your first & last name, address and phone number but these aren’t required and I don’t see any benefit of including them either. Once you’ve signed up you can sign in and you are then presented with two main options, Post a Problem or Halve a Problem and they do exactly what you’d expect them to do.

Posting a problem is as simple as adding the text and clicking send, there doesn’t seem to be any limit on the length of the question you can ask but the nature of the iPhone keyboard may limit how long a question you want to post. And then you wait…..and wait…..and wait for an answer. While you are waiting though you can go and view some of the questions which have been posted by other users to see if you can share some pearls of wisdom.

Searching for problems can be done in three ways. You can search for a key word or words, view some random problems or view the biggest problems. These options aren’t without there problems though. Searching brings back very few results, acne brought back 1 result while searches for back ache none and then sex returned zero results, while using the link to view the biggest problems it just results in a list of the most popular words, the problem with this is that the most common words aren’t filtered out so all you get is a page of words such as ‘Help’, ‘Please’, ‘When’, ‘Why’ and ‘Should’ which are not helpful at all.

Some of the questions that have been posted do have valid answers to them but the problem with this, and similar, apps is that they rely on both quantity and quality and until this app has a user base that offers a diverse range of questions and answers it can’t succeed, the problem for Problem Halved is that how does it get there in the first place.

There are plenty of places to get advice for free with an iPhone/iPod Touch and an internet connection so why you’d want to spend $1.99 on this app I don’t know. Perhaps if they add content and functionality then maybe it will be better value but until then this is one app that won’t be solving any of my problems.

App Store Official

Price $1.99

The Good

  • Posting questions is easy

The Not So Good

  • Can’t view questions without registering
  • Not enough content
  • Search is cluttered with common words

Reviewed By: Craig Willis

Problem Halved for iPhone Screenshots

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