Windows Phone App Review: PocketBracket

March Madness is upon us and PocketBracket is here to bring all the scores and bracketology to your Windows Phone.

PocketBracket helps eliminate the challenges of creating and managing your NCAA College Basketball Tournament brackets. Key features of the app include:

  • Create unlimited NCAA® tournament brackets
  • Automatic bracket scoring and ranking
  • Organize unlimited pools available across the PocketBracket Network
  • Create Private pools
  • Detailed Stats screens
  • Rotate for a full Bracket view
  • Get game scores and updates

You also have the ability to use a "SmartPick" feature to help you choose those too close to call games and share your picks through Facebook, Twitter or email.

PocketBracket is laid out with pages that will display your brackets, list any pools on the PocketBracket's network, list the network leaders, list the scores, and a page to access the app's tools (settings, about and contact screens).

PocketBracket's settings cover log in information for Twitter, Facebook and PocketBracket (free account). You can also turn off location services, delete all brackets and reset tournament settings.

To create a bracket, just go to your Brackets Page and tap the + button at the bottom of the screen. You will then name your bracket and then you will be sent to the bracket summary page. The bracket summary page will detail your picks and any pools joined. At the bottom of this page are three button controls; share, pin to start and my picks. To start building your bracket, tap the my picks button.

From there it's just an issue of working your way through the regions and rounds, making your selection of the game winners. When complete, just hit the save button at the bottom of the screen.

In addition to the Windows Phone App, you can visit PocketBracket.com to view the current tournament bracket and player standings.

Currently PocketBracket is listing the 2011 teams but will be updated once the 2012 bracket is released on March 11, 2012. As games are completed, the brackets are updated automatically and you can tap on a particular game within the bracket or on the Scoreboard Page to view the game stats and summary.  

All in all, I found PocketBracket to be a nice March Madness app to keep up with all your tournament picks. I like the ability to join pools to see how your skills of picking winners compares to others. It will be interesting to see how well the app stays updated as the tournament progresses.  So far, the only downside to PocketBracket is that there is not a trial version available.

PocketBracket will run you $.99 and you can find it here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.

George Ponder

George is the Reviews Editor at Windows Central, concentrating on Windows 10 PC and Mobile apps. He's been a supporter of the platform since the days of Windows CE and uses his current Windows 10 Mobile phone daily to keep up with life and enjoy a game during down time.