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Category: Entertainment
Developer: Comcast
Minimum Requirements: iPhone OS 2.1
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 2.2 MB
Price: Free (Comcast account required)
Availability: Now
Version Reviewed: 1.0

If you’re a subscriber to a Comcast cable service (television, internet, and/or VoIP), you’ll find that the new Comcast Mobile App is a useful hub. It has an uncluttered interface that allows you to check both your email and your voice mail, as well check your local TV listing and favorite the shows and channels you enjoy.

The big restriction is the most obvious: you have to be a Comcast subscriber to log into the application. Once you do that, it’ll automatically download your email. You can choose to sync your iPhone address book with your Comcast Universal Address Book (giving you another online copy), but even if you don’t, you’ll still have access to both should you need to send an email or make a call. The email application is straightforward: you can check your email, send from that address, and delete them one at a time or as a group. It’s pretty much the same as the iPhone Mail.app, and if you use that, Comcast Mobile doesn’t add any breathtaking new features. Still, this is the Comcast hub app, the email interface is well done, and it’d be stupid not to include it.

Speaking of which, I tested this on an iPod touch, which means I couldn’t test their iPhone-specific features, like “Call back to a contact entry” or “Text to a contact entry.” Also, I don’t use Comcast for VoIP, so I was unable to test one of the neater features: Visual Voice Mail, which allows you to see who’s left a call on your home phone, and listen to any messages left. One restriction I can tell you about is that the voice mail features are only available to the master account: sub-accounts can only access their email and TV listings.

The TV listings feature will be familiar to anyone who’s used an in-TV guide from a cable company. You enter your Zip code and it downloads the channels and programs available to you. For stations and shows you watch frequently, you can add them to a list of favorites to find them quickly. Tapping on a show will give you the description (natch), along with buttons that will let you set a reminder before it starts, another one that shows other airing times (in case you catch your favorite movie in the middle), and one that lets you share the listing via email. A note: one of the screenshots shows the TV listings with DVR icons (record, record series, delete): you can’t currently use the Comcast Mobile app to record to your DVR. There’s also access to Comcast’s On Demand service, which gives you some (some?) trailers you can view.

For Comcast subscribers, this is a handy little app, and the more services you use, the more useful it is.