Phlo App IconThis week we’re looking at an app which has actually been available for quite some time now.  It’s just been updated to version 3.0 though and made free to download from £2.99, which is nice.  It’s called Phlo, a name which I actually quite like, and it’s designed to streamline your searching experience between your phone and your Mac / desktop internet browser.

On the face of it, Phlo is very simple.  Type what you want to search for in the top bar, hit enter and Phlo will search Google for it, you can then tap the top right corner of the screen to pull out a menu which will let you use that same search term across a number of different websites.  This may sound quite pointless, bit when you think about the possible uses – it’s actually a really powerful tool.

For example; you want to buy a new laptop.  You can search for the model number in Google to find out if there is any information available.  With two button taps you can then search Twitter to find out if anyone is posting anything negative about that model number in particular, same again for Reddit and Facebook.  If that all looks good, you can then tap the sidebar for YouTube to see if anyone has posted a video of anything to look out for.  If you’re happy with all of this you can then navigate to eBay and Amazon to compare prices and make your final purchase.

Another benefit of Phlo is the desktop synchronisation, you’ll need to pay a subscription for this but once you do you can either download the app from the Mac App Store or get the browser extension for Firefox, Chrome or Safari, then save all of your searches from mobile to your desktop and vice-versa.

Overall Phlo is a very powerful tool, especially now it’s free to download, I can see it becoming more of a household name and possibly even a big-value acquisition around the corner.