Zemote
By App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating: 
By: Zemote
Version #: 1.0
Date Released: 2008-12-19
Developer: Young Kim
Price: 3.99
User Rating:
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When you’re looking around on the app store there are all sorts of programs that look great. It’s sometimes very hard to tell the difference between a wonderful program and one that is not quite ready for prime time. A reviewing site like What’s On iPhone lets you know about some of the best programs out for our beloved mobile platform, but we also need to tell you when you should spend you money elsewhere. Unfortunately, this is an elsewhere program. Zemote has a great description and some wonderful pictures. It is one of the few programs I have seen that had a perfect 5 on its ratings in iTunes. Its description says it will allow you to use your iPhone as a touch pad, a keyboard and a remote for your media player on any wi-fi enabled computer. It even does most of this. The problem is that it doesn’t do it very well, and there are better options out there
First let’s talk about what does work. The touchpad on zemote basically turns the entire face of the iphone into a surface that allows you to move your cursor. It’s nice to have all that real estate to move around on. There are two greyed areas at the bottom of the screen that correspond to the right and left buttons on your mouse, as well as a grey scroll bar on the right hand side of the screen. There are also two round buttons on the screen: the one in the upper right corner pulls up a menu of the other remotes you can change to, and the one in the lower left that I think of as the mystery button. This is the start of what doesn’t work about this app. I pressed this button in every situation I could think of, watching the cursor all the time – nothing. If zemote had a help screen or instructions of any sort, I could have checked with them, but they don’t. So instead, I pushed to no avail. Eventually I was reading the documentation for a similar program and guessed its function. You push it and tilt your iPhone to move the cursor. Unfortunately, it produced a wild and uncontrollable motion in the cursor. I think I liked the button more when it was a mystery.
I actually decided to try this program because of the pictures of the keyboard. When you click on the keyboard option from the menu, it takes you to a full screen keyboard larger than any I’ve seen on the iPhone. It is in landscape and takes up the whole screen. Numbers and letters and anything else you might need are visible, and when you push “Fn” you get even more. There is only a status bar at the top and even that blacks out when you start typing. You’ve got to give credit when it is due and this keyboard is fun to type on. It’s easy to be fairly accurate and it is very nice not to have to change screens for the numbers. I did have a few problems with it, though — the biggest challenge for me is that is does not have predictive text. I have gotten very used to the iPhone correcting all of my typing errors. I think of it as my non-judgmental spelling fairy. With this program my fairy was on vacation. (I like to think she was in Hawaii) All my typing mistakes were there for me to view. Yuk! My last problem was just what I think of as a bad choice. In creating the keyboard, zemote decided to put the tab button right next to the space bar. This resulted in many overly long spaces in the text. Let me give you an example. “This keyboard has a lot of potential, but it is not quite there.” (Looked great on the line at the top…)
The media remote was the biggest disappointment. VLC is my media player of choice and I was looking forward to using this remote to view my last ever episode of “Dead Like Me.” (My present tv obsession) I could get the play/stop, volume, and fast forward to work. But again, there was a mysterious button in the middle. This time it stayed a mystery. Also many of the labeled buttons did nothing at all. It could be that there was a way of telling it I was using VLC instead of Windows Media Center or finding solving the second mystery, but I will never know. I looked. A lot. No documentation.
Zemote is a program that has a lot of promise. With a few bug fixes, a lot of documentation, and a couple of cool interface upgrades, (…automatically changing to keyboard when I turn to landscape, and back when I turn to portrait, perhaps…) this could be a great program. Unfortunately, it is not there yet, especially with great alternatives like Air Mouse out there.
Quick Take
Value: Low
Would I Buy Again: Not without an update.
Learning Curve: Very hard to understand, no documentation.
Who Is It For: Wireless touch-pad, keyboard, media controller fans
What I Like: Large area for touch-pad, complete keyboard
What I Don’t: Much of it didn’t work for me
Final Statement: Lot’s of promise, but didn’t deliver
My Rating:
2.5/5
O U R T A K E . . .
