Pinterest Android App hits 190,000 Downloads, keeps Fantastic Rating

The official Pinterest app for Android has hit over 190,000 downloads now, just a few months after it was released to the world and in the process it has garnered an almost 100% 5 star rating. From desktop web looks to mobile, Pinterest have an impeccable taste for design.

Over a year after the release of Pinterest for iOS, pin-happy socialites have been for a few months able get their mitts on the Android version of the official Pinterest app. Displacing a thousand ad-pushing wannabes, the Pinterest app brings the same fluid immediacy to collating the web that the versions on other platforms do. So what’s it like to use?

Sitting on an almost full five star rating on the the Google Play Android Market and nearly 150,000 5-star reviews to match, Pinterest blows social media competitors like Facebook and MySpace right out of the water. It’s free, it’s fluid, and weighs in at a tiny 3.9MB. How does it compare to the desktop version?

The start-up screen is a thing of beauty

In general, it’s just as good as the desktop version, if not better – there’s nothing quite like using a tablet to pin virtual notes to your virtual noticeboard with your virtual fingertips. It blows up big images so the whole display is beautifully responsive in both landscape and portrait layouts. It provides a sexy minimal UI emphasizing that bold red-and-grey color scheme. You can pin straight from your browser (which you can’t do on iOS), and make new boards (though you can’t do this from outside the app – say, if you found some new content while browsing online). Few features are missing. Notably, and for some bizarre reason, you can’t edit your profile in-app.

What impresses most about Pinterest’s Android app, though, is the sheer attention to detail that’s gone into it. In the year it’s taken to develop, they’re struck a perfect balance between form and functionality, integrating the unique Pinterest visual style with Android’s standard UI without dropping anything along the way. In a way, it’s incredibly artistic – the blending of two wildly different interfaces in this way.

Searching for Pins is enabled – just as on the website – and you can search for specific boards or people, too. It really does feel like ‘Twitter+’: it takes the ‘tweet’ model of social media interaction to the next level.

There has never been a better time to get this app, and to get started with Pinterest. They’ve just had their servers reinforced – thanks to the Amazon Cloud outage last week – and are one of the fastest-growing social media websites on the web (growing 85 percent between January and February 2012), valued at $1.5 billion as of March 2012. And, with their Android app acting as the flagship entry point for consumers, their future looks very secure indeed.

About Jakk: Jakk Ogden is a professional self-employed blogger and the founder / owner of Technology Blogged. 22, with a love for good writing, you'll find me playing 'Drag Racing' on my HTC One X and rocking a pair of Grado headphones. If you love technology, be sure to subscribe to my feed for unique editorials. Find me on Google+. View author profile.