The battle for social geolocation domination has expanded to Google’s Android platform, as Gowalla, the primary competitor to Foursquare, has just made its debut on Google’s Android app store.
The new Gowalla 1.0 app isn’t some secondhand version of its iPhone counterpart — it’s completely packed with an array of features that allow you to check into locations, view friends, access details about specific locations, and check out your progress completion for trips (a Gowalla feature that lets you earn badges by checking into a set of locations).
Essentially, the app is divided into four sections: Activity (a feed of your friend’s activity stream), Spots (where you find nearby locations to check into), Trips (explained above), and Passport (your personal profile and list of achievements). Each section drills deeper, allowing you to add friends, view maps of specific locations (along with the number of check-ins and people there), or complete a trip.
Here’s the gist of it: Gowalla for Android, from first impressions, is well-designed and has many of the features of its iPhone counterpart, though as Android and Me points out, you can’t create a location within the app quite yet.
It needed to be slick and feature-rich to compete with Foursquare’s Android app (which I think in many ways is superior to its iPhone version). Whether it succeeded…well, that’ll take some time. Gowalla users, be sure to tell us what you think about the app in the comments.
Now here are a few screenshots, courtesy of Android and Me. You can check out a full gallery there.
