We keep loading more and more video streaming apps on your devices. Quibi is a new video streaming platform whose target audience is mobile users. The company officially launched the service this week and even if most of the content is currently American based, you don’t need a VPN to access it.
Quibi is Netflix, but only for your phone and mostly for those idle moments that are long enough to be felt, yet brief enough that you wouldn’t turn to anything but your phone. You know: waiting in lines at the bank, pausing to sip your tea, sitting in a car while someone runs into a supermarket to grab something. This is one of Quibi’s problem: it seems like it was created for a world that doesn’t really exist anymore, one put on hold due to the corona pandemic. But of your mobile phone is your only source for consuming content, then you are good to go.
Because Quibi is designed to be habitual. New episodes are scheduled to drop every day, and new shows will premiere “every single Monday,” per Quibi. It’s a steady stream of quick bites coming from an endless bag of treats.
User Experience
I can’t shake off the feeling that Quibi is now a harder sell. TV to watch while you’re doing something else doesn’t seem very appealing when no one really has anything going on. However, the contrary can also be true: we’re all staring at our phones anyway, so what’s another reason to do it some more? As of today, there are 24 reasons, each Quibi show delivered in installments of 10 minutes or less, each launch show with the first three episodes ready to stream.
Honestly speaking my initial Quibi experience has been a disappointment due to much buffer and choppy video experience and it was not a issue to do with my internet speeds. On the bright-side, Quibi shows are designed to play equally well no matter how you hold your phone; almost every one is shot in a way that works in both landscape and vertical orientations. I checked this, incessantly, with every show I watched despite the horrible video experience.
The content
To be clear, most of Quibi’s programming is the sort of stuff you can find on regular American based TV, just broken up into smaller pieces. Murder House Flip is a reality show in the vein of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in seven-minute chunks. Punk’d actually was a TV show long before Quibi, but someone figured it might play better if you didn’t have to spend 30 minutes with it.
Chrissy’s Court, a Judge Judy-style courtroom show in which John Legend’s wife Chrissy Teigen is a courtroom judge mediating exclusively petty disputes.
Documentaries also fare pretty well on the video mobile platform. The standout is I Promise, about LeBron James’. There is a lot more content for you to check out as well.
How to get Quibi & Pricing
You can get Quibi from your Android PlayStore or Apple App Store to enjoy your first 3 month trail for free. After which you will part with UGX 30,000 ($7.99) per month. This means just like Netflix, this is also an ad-free service. You can use your VISA, PayPal, Mastercard or even MTN Mobile Money.
Please note that if you have to use VPN if you are not located in the USA also your PlayStore or App Store should be US based. To change this for Android users, you may refer to this article.
ALSO READ: How to pay for Uber, Ebay, Quibi, Netflix, Amazon Prime…using MTN Mobile Money
Crushed at Launch
At launch, the app experienced a one-hour outage. And although the service was designed for on-the-go viewing, Quibi anticipated more people might be binge-watching the app instead of in short bursts now that more people are staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I think, Quibi’s best point of comparison is podcasts, not streaming TV. It is something you would do between viewing your Snap, Tiktok or Instagram stories. It’s a medium for filling space that you probably already had filled with something else, but for some reason, you got it in your head that you should be finishing something in that time.
