From the 18th of May, 2023, the ChatGPT app is free to use for iOS users in the US. OpenAI has promised to expand to additional countries in the coming weeks, so hopefully, they will finish the worldwide rollout in the coming weeks.
UPDATE: The official ChatGPT application became available for 152 countries on the 1st of June. Look for it in the app store.
The app requires iOS 16.1 or a later version, so make sure to update your iOS before downloading the app.
The tool now integrates Whisper, which is the OpenAI speech-recognition system, so now it’s not necessary to type in, but you can use voice input too. Knowing Wihisper’s particularly good voice recognition ability, this is a pretty useful improvement idea that could even be integrated by default into the web interface and avoid using browser extensions.
The Free and Plus subscriptions are also available on the app so that advanced users can use GPT-4 capabilities. To learn more about the ChatGPT subscriptions and get some use cases click here.
It is also cool that the chat history is synced across devices, so you start chatting on the web and continue tomorrow via mobile. This feature is really useful; however, to get to the history takes two taps, and not fully obvious where to go. The function of renaming or deleting previous conversations is also available here, so you can keep the chat history structured even via mobile.
The user interface is very clean and simple, as we have already experienced from the web version. When our conversation with the chatbot becomes large, it would help to use later – via history – with a keyword search function, which would scroll to the right section of the long chat. Unfortunately, this function is still not available. If you don’t have an existing ChatGPT account registered via the web, that’s no problem, as you can start from scratch via mobile and create a new account.
The app recognizes the phone’s dark mode/light mode settings, so you can easily adapt to the given lighting conditions with this app too.
In relation to battery usage, the app gets better and better with each release. However, the phone tends to run a little hotter during usage. In the last release, OpenAI changed the haptic settings and turned it auto-disabled on low battery. By the way, that would also be a useful feature if the app settings would drive a haptic behavior, and it could be disabled via the ChatGPT app.
ChatGPT plugins can be used in almost the same way as the web interface, so you can also search the internet or compile a shopping list via mobile.
Conclusion
The development of the official ChatGPT app was very timely in order to ensure reliable mobile usability for this very popular service. With the usage of Wishper and the fact that plug-ins are also available through the app, the user may get more than expected. Among the areas to be improved, it should be mentioned that the history solution is not the most user-friendly, and the haptic default usage can also be a bit divisive. All in all, an important development and basically a well-designed application of the extremely popular GPT technology.
OpenAI also thinks about Android users and has predicted the development of a compatibility app as soon as possible. “Android users, you’re next!”
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