Since the iPhone has been on the market we’ve witnessed a plethora of different Wikipedia applications, all of which have thus far been produced by third party developers. While this isn’t a bad thing in itself – in fact apps such as Wikamo are a joy to use – we’ve always held out for an official entry from the creators of the original site. That particular prayer has now been answered, but it’s difficult not to feel slightly underwhelmed.

As is duly noted on the App Store page for Wikipedia Mobile, it’s a program that is likely to improve over time. It’s a good job too, because in its present form it’s left standing by the more established Wikipedia clients. For example, searching for things is tremendously hit-and-miss; more often than not you’ll get an entirely unrelated subject to the one you were originally looking for. This is something that the developer is obviously working on, because the search facility is getting better as time goes on, but there remain a few genuinely puzzling search results.

When you actually locate the topic you wanted, using Wikipedia Mobile is quite pleasurable. The text is a decent size and images are relatively decent quality. Navigation is aided by collapsible menu options, which allow you to digest sections of each entry one-by-one, without having to load up too much information in one go.

However, there’s currently no way of viewing a page in landscape mode, which is a far superior way of looking at a site such as this. Loading times between pages can sometimes be a pain; even on a fast Wi-Fi connection you’ll have to wait a few seconds before each entry is downloaded – which is an awfully long time when you consider that save for a smattering of small photos, you’re predominately looking at plain text. Also, each entry ends with a direct link to the main Wikipedia website – which probably tells you all you need to know about the developer’s confidence in this app.

Official applications usually put to shame those that are unaffiliated with the product or site in question, but here we have an example of the exact opposite being true.

Granted, it’s early days for Wikipedia Mobile and we’re sure that the developers are working hard to improve its usability, but at the present moment in time we’d recommend you ignore the hype and stick with apps like Wikamo, which has been around for a while and is already fine-tuned.