Great idea, terrible terrible app though – Chess Watch! Review

First of all: the idea is great. Just telling your watch the move and being able to play with a friend from your watch would be wonderful. However, the design and the coding are horrible. - It often crashes, especially on the watch, especially if there is no multiplayer game on. - No engine, no online players, it’s only good to play with a friend who buys the same app. Why not tapping into one of the existing online chess site protocols? - The board doesn’t rotate when playing black! Very annoying and it suggests that the developer never actually tried to use his own app to play. - No settings. Board coordinates weirdly in the center. - Game on the watch loads very very slowly. - Programmer probably doesn’t even play chess - one of the listed moves says “takes King.” :-) - The way to enter moves using speech recognition is awkward and in some cases, doesn’t even work. First, you tap, then you tap the microphone icon, then you speak, then you tap again the “Done.” Really bad design. Plus, it doesn’t seem to understand castling when spoken. So, I guess the selling point here is that there IS a chess app for the watch and not that it actually works in any useful way. Too bad as my daughter’s watch is arriving today...
Review by Balintka on Chess Watch!.