Review: Poynt for Blackberry, Find Dining Near You

By L. Stolpman in Food on Oct 22, 2009 7:00PM

The iPhone and Urban Spoon aren't your only option for finding dining near you on a mobile phone. Poynt is a free mobile application for your Blackberry that we've found very helpful in locating restaurants, mapping their locations and reading reviews. Here's how it works.

When you run Poynt, the application checks to see if your GPS chip is enabled and, if not, tells you how to turn it on - or you can manually set your location. Once in the application, you'll see five large icons across your screen: Businesses, People, Movies (which is fantastic and easy!), Restaurants, and Map It. We're going to take a look at Restaurants.

When you select Restaurants, you have three options:

• Restaurants Near Me
• Restaurants by Name
• Restaurants by Cuisine

We selected Restaurants Near Me and Poynt used Superpages.com, Citysearch, OpenTable and Yelp to compile a list of restaurants nearby. The list of restaurants includes the name and distance from your location. As you scroll down the list, details for each restaurant open up, including the full address and its Yelp Review rating. Searching by Name and Cuisine also provides you with a list of restaurants near you. While a restaurant is highlighted, you can hit your blackberry button to see some options you can select relative to that restaurant. Below are some examples.

• Add a Calendar event - Poynt inserts the restaurant information directly into the event.
• Book a Reservation - which takes you to Open Table
• See Restaurant Details
• Read Restaurant Reviews
• Call the Restaurant
• View a Map location of the restaurant - Poynt even lets you specify if you'd prefer to use Google Maps or Blackberry Maps
• View a Map route to the restaurant from your location
• Add the Restaurant to your address book (we find this incredibly helpful)

The application is fast, intuitive, and easy to use. We're running it on our Blackberry Tour (9630) and couldn't be happier. Its largest competitor is the Where application which we've found far less helpful in finding restaurant details. In fact, Where does not have a restaurant specific search; it uses the yellow pages. One benefit of Where, though, is the Starbucks icon that will quickly locate the nearest Starbucks. But, apparently, most Blackberry users agree on the preference for Poynt as it consistently receives a higher rating than Where in Blackberry App World.

If you'd like Poynt for your Blackberry, it is available for free at BlackBerry App World (choose Maps & Navigation and then Local Search) or by visiting: http://m.mypoynt.com from your BlackBerry smartphone. View a demo of Poynt on the Blackberry Storm here. In short, we think Poynt is a must-have for you Blackberry users.