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Tapatalk for iPhone is a perfect app for those of you who browse several forums (including our own TiPb Forums!). We all know most forums have mobile versions, but sometimes the controls aren't so intuitive, nor is the control. Tapatalk allows you to connect remotely to your forums via the app. You can then visit all your forums from the accounts tab. From there you can choose which site you'd like to browse and connect to it.

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One thing that's always kept me from browsing forums more often is mobile integration. It's just not that great. Browsing forums has always been a more pleasant experience on an actual computer. With Tapatalk, I think I like browsing forums from my phone even more. The premise is simple, connect to the forums you're a member of by searching for them. You can then log in to your account and it'll bring over all the threads your subscribed to and even your private messages. Tapatalk supports most versions of vBulletin (most forums use this) as well as a few other types.

As of now, not all sites are supported as the administrator of the site needs to activate Tapatalk on their forums in order for it to pull into the app. In addition to TiPb Forums, Android Central Forums are already supported, I'd only guess the rest will follow. Most of the forums I'm a member of are currently supported. Activating Tapatalk is free so if you see a site you'd like to be able to browse via Tapatalk, shoot the admin an e-mail and ask them if they can add it to their site. The list has been growing everyday.

Once you're inside a forum, you can do mostly everything you can do from a computer. You can quote people and reply simply by tapping on the post you'd like to quote and a blue quote box will appear, which you'll click and it takes you to a user entry field. If you tap on one of your own posts, you'll get a second option to edit your post.

Under the latest section within a forum, you'll notice that your tabs will carry unread counts as well. Your participated tab is where you'll find all the threads you're subscribed to within that forum. The unread tab is simply a list of all the latest posts within that forum.

Your main sections are Network, Accounts, History, and Settings. Network will allow you to browse through categories of forums that are supported. I actually found a few forums I didn't know about that I've now joined. The accounts tab will show all the accounts you are currently signed into. Tapping one of them will take you to that forum's postings. History shows you a list of the forums you've visited recently. Settings is pretty self exclamatory. This is where you'll be able to tweak settings such as link behavior, image control, and layouts. What's nice about the setting app is if you aren't sure what a setting is or does, they have notes telling you what enabling or disabling something will do which minimizes confusion.

My experience with the app has been overwhelmingly good. It's incredibly fast and connects to forums almost immediately. If you're on Wifi, it's immediate. If you're on 3G or lower, a page or account may take a second to load, but even on Edge, you'll never wait more than a few seconds for something to load.

Tapatalk also offers a free version that is Read Only, meaning you can read posts but can't sign in or post yourself. So if you want to check out the app before purchasing the full version, check out the read only one first to get a feel for it.

If this app eventually adds push for unread private messages and new posts in subscribed threads, that would severely minimize my e-mail clutter. I'll keep my fingers crossed for that. But in the mean time, let us know if you've picked it up and leave your thoughts in the comments!

Pros

Extremely easy layout to navigate
Incredibly quick
Integration supports with many blogs, and free for administrators to implement on any site supported
Good tools for finding new communities
Great user control within forums