Mobile ESPN 2.0: Up Close and Personal

Mobile ESPN is back, baby! Down for the count last October, the service is now back as a free download for Verizon Wireless V Cast subscribers, and I took the app for a test drive today at the massive ESPN Zone in Times Square. The verdict? I really liked what I saw—indeed, this is pretty much the same application that was on the original Mobile ESPN phones two years ago (a few tweaks aside), and that's great news for sports fans.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mobile ESPN, the service launched back in 2005 as an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) running on Sprint's cellular network. The original Mobile ESPN phone—tthe clunky Sanyo MM-9000, a.k.a. the MVP—twasn't much to look at, but the Mobile ESPN application was gorgeous. The program looked and felt like a mobile version of SportsCenter, complete with all the news, scores, videos and stats you could imagine. But sports fans were leery of jumping carriers for the phone, and ESPN parent Disney pulled the plug last October.

Now the service (dubbed ESPN MVP) is back as a download for six Verizon Wireless phones (the LG Chocolate, VX8300 and VX8600, along with the Motorola RAZR V3c, V3m and the KRZR K1m, and more supported phones should be coming soon), and I'm pleased to report that the original Mobile ESPN experience is more or less intact. On my test KRZR K1m, the application downloaded in about a minute, and a few seconds later I was surfing around the service.

Navigating the application is easy; a scrollbar on the left lets you browse options such as news, videos, scores, and fantasy info. You can also add up to five favorite teams (either NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and college basketball and hoops) to your sidebar for easy access—and best of all, you can made the sidebar slide out from the left side of the display at any time. Through it all, that ubiquitous EPSN ticker is scrolling at the bottom of the screen.

Besides headlines for most of the major sports, you can also access a generous selection of daily videos (most are snippets from SportsCenter and ESPN shows like "Pardon the Interruption"), and you can also browse a galaxy of stats, including the latest numbers for every player in baseball, football, hockey, hoops, you name it. There's even a player tracker that lets you keep tabs on your favorites (handy for fantasy sports).

There are a few missing links in the latest incarnation of Mobile ESPN. First, you can't manage your fantasy teams or SMS alerts (for news, scores, and so on) within the application; you'll have to visit the ESPN WAP site for that. Also, there aren't up-to-the-moment real-time scores yet; you can view game pages that refresh every 30 seconds, but the original Mobile ESPN features actual, real-time scores for certain games, and that's missing in the current app. However, I'm told that real-time scoring will be back in time for football, and that fantasy teams and multimedia alerts will be coming to ESPN MVP within the coming months.

All in all, I'm thrilled to see Mobile ESPN is back in business—it's literally one of the best mobile apps I've ever used, and I'm glad to see Verizon Wireless is offering it for free (provided you're using the $15/month V Cast access plan). Thumbs up.