The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has finally put out an official iPhone application in which everyone can have their say as to who should win an Oscar. It’s a fun way to share your favorite picks with friends and family by email, text, Facebook or Twitter.

The best thing about this app is its simplicity. The main purpose is to make your own predictions about who will win the Oscar award for each category. There are basically four main areas that are easily accessible from the main page or the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. From the prediction page you can select any category you’d like, and a list of the nominees will be displayed. You can simply tap on a nominee to select it, or you can tap on the arrow to get more information about that nominee. You have the option to read the synopsis of the movie, watch the movie trailer and read about the Oscar history of the person who is being nominated. Your selections are not posted to the database until you hit the save button. Once saved, you can then navigate to the results page to see the percentage of votes for each nominee. Your selection will have a “thumbs up” icon next to it.

After you are satisfied with your predictions, you can choose to share them through email, text message, Facebook or Twitter. This added feature makes it fun to share your predictions with friends and family. However, when sent using Twitter, it only says that you’ve made your predictions and attaches a link to the app on iTunes. It doesn’t actually list your predictions on Twitter.

Even though this is a free application, and you shouldn’t expect a ton of amazing features, I think there’s one feature that really keeps it from succeeding. I would absolutely expect there to be some sort of Oscar news section in this app. The official website for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has some great content that would have been perfect for this application. There’s press news, nominee interviews, polls, etc. This is gossip that people love to hear about. Without it, this app only serves a minor purpose, and therefore will not be widely popular in the app store.

Overall, The Oscars is a fun app that will make you feel like you are participating in the whole Oscar experience. It’s interesting to see the total percentage of votes for each category and nominee. Even though it does lack a solid Oscar news section, it’s a free app, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t give it a try and make your own predictions.

Visit Appolicious for more iPhone app reviews and articles.