Bargain Bin “ an app that helps you find bargains and price drops in the iPhone App Store “ has been updated, to Version 3.0, and has added push notifications for price drops.

I gave the new version of Bargain Bin a try last night and the new push feature looks good.

It ‘s easy to add an app to your Watch List, and set a price level you want it to drop to in order to trigger a push alert to you.  So, for example if I didn ‘t already own the excellent iProRecorder voice recording app “ which is currently priced at $2.99 “ I could add it to my Watch List and set it to alert me when the app hits $1.99.

In addition to individual Watch List items, you can also set the app to send you alerts on some general types of events “ these are ‘Apps Gone Free ‘ and ‘Other App Deal Alerts ‘.  With each, you can set your alert level to None, Popular, or All.

I haven ‘t had enough time with the app to comment on how well / quickly the notifications work, but their setup within the app seems good.  I would like to see a few more choices added though “ so you could ask for alerts on just a particular category for example.

There are a couple of things that still bug me about Bargain Bin, as compared to a couple of other leading app-hunting apps (AppMiner and Store-Extend).  One is that if you simply tap on an app ‘s name within a listing, it takes you out of Bargain Bin and over to the App Store “ which more often than not is not what I wanted at all.  I usually first want to see an app ‘s description and / or screenshots of it.  In order to see these, you need to tap and hold on an app ‘s name in a listing.  This seems quite counter-intuitive to me.  I think a simple tap should take you to a description and screenshots etc. for an app, and a further action should be needed to go out to the App Store.

I also think the app description pages could be better designed and that the app ‘s UI as a whole feels too busy.  The other two similar apps mentioned above both have much nicer interfaces.

Having said all that, Bargain Bin is still a very effective app to hunt for App Store bargains with, and push notifications is a major addition “ especially since many apps do very short-run sales, where their price is only discounted for a day or so.

You can grab the latest version of Bargain Bin in the App Store now, and it ‘s a free app.

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