CoCoPPa App
by Alicia Ptak
With over 6.4 million active iPhones in the US, it’s hard to make the standard, sleek, modern looking phone seem original. Cases can decorate the outside of your phone as well as change your home and lock screen. But, the CoCoPPa app has taken originality a step further.
The lifestyle app allows users to download cute, personalized, and unique apps that work as shortcuts to other apps on the iPhone. Basically, if users dislike the look of an app, they can find the downloadable shortcut that looks more preferable than the original app, making their phone look nicer.
Junior Julia Ducey liked the app at first, but soon realized it’s not as great as she thought. “I loved how my phone looked once I put in all the app shortcuts. It was so much prettier than the original apps. The only thing I hadn’t realized was that I had to keep all the old apps,” says Ducey. “I didn’t want two of the same apps showing, so I moved all of the original ones to the back of my phone, so all you could see were the new shortcuts.” Ducey found this a waste of time, since she would spend more time on the page with the original apps, than on the page with the better looking shortcuts.
Jessie Stramaglia also liked the app until she realized it was useless to have. “I really liked how I could choose better 
looking shortcuts for my apps, but the shortcuts caused a lot of problems,” Stramaglia says. When I created a shortcut to my phone, email, and text messages, the shortcut would connect to me. So when I press the phone, it calls me. When I click my mail, it opens a new email to myself. The app shortcuts aren’t actually all that helpful.” For Stramaglia, she spent more time using the original apps than the shortcuts, much like Ducey.
Some other problems students have found with the app is that it takes a long time to set up shortcuts for all the apps, not all the app shortcuts were available, and it drained the battery when in use.
So should your phone’s appearance trump its practicality? For many students that answer is no.
