Announcing Partner Reviews

There are a lot of apps out there. More than 27,000. From the start we have said that there is no way that we can review every app or even try to do so. But, there must be something we can do to give our readers what they want.

So today, we are proud to announce an initiative, partner reviews, to help us cover a few more apps on 148Apps. The idea being that we will swap a couple reviews per week with select partner sites. This is something we’ve been working with Slide To Play for a few weeks now and we think we finally have it right. So today we’re publishing the first review from Slide To Play. In the coming weeks you’ll see a couple of our reviews show up on Slide To Play. We may expand this to other sites in the future, but for now we want to keep it pretty small and see how it goes.

So take a look at our front page and you’ll see a review for Heavy Mech. — it’s our first partner review from Slide To Play. Let us know what you think of this new initiative, we’d love your feedback.

Heavy Mach’s a fun action game, although it has room to improve.

Some Notes on Integrity

Over this weekend it came to our attention that at least one iPhone app review site is doing some things that would seem to severely tarnish their editorial integrity. While we here at 148Apps are still a tiny little site, we want to make some things absolutely clear.

While we accept advertising on our site as a way to keep the ever-growing site going, we will never let those ads influence our reviews in any way. This includes the outcome of the review itself along with what applications we decide to review and when we review them.

On this subject, Steve over at Slide To Play had a great editorial on Friday that sums up my feelings and our guidelines much better than I could ever hope to.

In association Steve and some honest folks at other iPhone app review sites, we’re going to develop the oath he mentions. Simply, that oath will state that we don’t take money for reviews. Though it will probably be a little wordier than that.

While you may not agree with all of our reviews, they are all the honest opinion of the reviewer. And even if that other site continues to do things a little shady, we plan on keeping our integrity and hope that in the end, even if it doesn’t make us the most popular, it will make us better.