Black Friday Survival Guide - iPhone App to Save Money

Yes, the Thanksgiving holiday is quickly approaching and with it is all the buzz about the highly anticipated Black Friday sales, which could potentially bring huge savings to the smart, spendthrifty and brave bargain hunters this 2012 shopping season. Black Friday Survival Guide (by Sazze, Inc.) will put you in the “know” with its real-time breaking news feed, informing you of all the latest news’ leaks for current and upcoming sales for the major brand stores, with circular ads, convenient Stores and Categories for browsing, a functional list maker, social sharing functionality, and the option to get additional coupons.

Black Friday Survival Guide came out in October 2010, and has received a few updates since then, with the latest occurring on November 16, 2012, which includes a cool new auto refresh for the news feed. This easy-to-use Lifestyle app opens up to the all important Black Friday News with listed articles trickling in from today’s date (and earlier dates as well) showing the latest breaking article: Pre-Black Friday Sale 2012 Round Up, divulging the newest sales info for Amazon, Best Buy, Sears and Walmart. This simple shopping/sales app is broken down into 4 main sections: News, Stores, Categories, and Shopping List.

Looking through the Stores category, I discover approximately 75 big brand stores listed A-W, starting with AAFES to Walmart Toy Book Wish List, but also includes other stores like Bass Pro Shops, Family Dollar, IKEA, JC Penney, Kmart, Office Depot, Tanger Outlets, Overstock, Toys R Us, and more. Upon investigating a little further, you’ll find that you can View Ad Scan to see the stores’ sales ad, see available sales by: All, Door Busters, Online Deals or check them out by Categories, and seek additional store specific coupons using the “$” icon, but this takes you to the dealspl.us website, which is what the Pocketly Coupons app is powered by. Pocketly Coupons is this developers other Free app, which appears to have high ratings and is supposed to save you additional money through coupons, offers and rewards.

What’s nice about shopping by Categories is that you can checkout the deals quickly for specific types of items and compare stores to see where you’ll get it cheaper. There are roughly 44 Categories: A-V, starting with Apparel (which had the most item entries, 2559) and ending with Video Games (413 items). When you tap on the specific product information, you’ll be able get a closer look at the item, see when the sales start, see a total of all sales items for the store (also broken down into categories, any Doorbusters available, Online deals, as well as coupons, and same share functionality as in the Stores search (email, Facebook, Twitter, and SMS), and the option to add to your shopping list.

I love the ease of the simple Shopping List feature that lets you view your created alphabetized list. When you tap the Shopping List icon, you’ll see what your category selections are by store, which also gives you the date and time of sales allowing you to create a full-blown strategical shopping plan. I like how clean, intuitive and easy this app is to use, but it lacks GPS locator functionality to help you find stores close to you, and store information (phone number, address) — which would be nice to save you some time and energy — you’ll need that when you’re up at the wee hours of the morning – or pulling an all-nighter. Another feature that would be great here is the ability to create a customized list of names and items for the people you are shopping for.

Overall, as we all look for ways to save on the items and gifts we plan on purchasing this year, I think this Black Friday Survival Guide (for the iPhone) will get everybody off to a good start — and hopefully save you a boatload of money on all your holiday shopping.