DeviantArt gets an iPhone app as stunning as its art

By Josh Lowensohn – May 13, 2008 3:54 PM PDT

Yesterday social arts community and two time Webware 100 winner Deviant Art released a beautiful mobile version of its site that's been optimized for Apple's iPhone. I've been playing around with it this afternoon and it's a wonderfully simple way to explore the various art mediums that have made the community so popular. To access it, users simply need to navigate to DeviantArt.com on their handsets and they'll automatically be directed to the finger friendly version.

It shares a lot in common with Facebook's iPhone app, a design so successful that it's been featured in Apple's advertising for the device. However, unlike Facebook, DeviantArt's efforts rely more on a simple menu structure that lets you dig through its 1600 plus categories of art to explore only the bits that interest you. While simple and fairly fast to navigate (even over EDGE), once you get about four levels deep it gets a little cumbersome. Luckily, you're able to get to drill down to a specific category in about three menus. The real beauty is that you can hop back and forth between what's popular and what's new in any category you're in, and clicking on any item will open it up without taking you to a new page.

In addition to images and text items, DeviantArt has made available the entirety of its video collection. The videos can be played in full screen, and if you're logged in to your DeviantArt account you can bookmark them for later use. The same goes for any other content you come across. You're also able to visit user profiles like you would on the site, and browse through entire user galleries with just a few finger touches.

Coming in the future will be iPhone optimized versions of DeviantArts forums, news pages, and the the message center, which alerts users to new content submitted by users they've bookmarked. More shots after the break.