Flashabet review

Mark Mackay

We review Flashabet, an iPhone app that will help your sprogs learn their ABC

Published on Oct 28, 2009

Amongst the iPhone's millions of uses is as that of a learning aid for children.

In this category falls a number of apps to help teach your child literacy.

When you're but knee-high to a grasshopper, the thought of learning the alphabet can be quite a daunting prospect but Flashabet from Winkpass Creations been has been developed to help do just that.

This is all it does though, so don't download it expecting it to work miracles for you kid's overall literacy skills. There are six different aids in total. For the first three, the app teaches the letters of the alphabet in order from A to Z in both capital, lower case formats and numbers from 1 to 20.

Once these have been mastered, the app provides the option to do the same but in a random order. The benefit of this is of course that rather than remember letters or numbers by the order they appear in, your rugrat will learn them for their shape and name.

Once you select your aid, each letter or number is displayed alone on a screen in a bright colour and large, simple font. At the bottom of the page, fast forward and rewind-type icons let you cycle through to the next letter. A play icon in between these will have a voice play the sound of a letter.

Perhaps in a bid to let your child identify with the app, the developers have opted for a young person's voice to sound the letter or number. What's important though is that it's done clearly so that it's understandable and not in some broad accent.

There's nothing in the way of options in Flashabet. The app provides these six different alphanumeric run-throughs and that's your lot.

Considering it's just 59p, this is forgivable. However the interface, particularly the Flashabet logo at the top of the home screen is a bit rough around the edges and it feels like the app has been put together in about an hour.

However the simplicity does serve its purpose of making it incredibly easy to use and considering the sort of age group that it's aimed at, this is a good thing.

If you have children at the sort of age where they are learning the alphabet and trust them not to get chocolate sauce on your iPhone then it could be worth a download.