I am a do-it-yourself home improvement project person. I enjoy getting my hands dirty performing home repairs and trying my hand at new projects that I have never attempted before. I don’t play video games to challenge myself; I learn to smooth stucco on a wall for a challenge. When I found out that the Home Depot had released an iPhone app, I was looking forward to integrating my home improvement projects and my iPhone.

After a quick installation, I began to poke around the app an quickly realized that there was not much to the app. I was initially prompted to choose my local store for the local Home Depot sale’s flyer, however, it was only a prompt — the app did not change me to the local store selection screen, nor did it point me in the right direction. I was simply told to do so.

Image via Wikipedia

Finding the local store based on my current location was simple and there was also an alternative for entering my zip code to find my local store. After choosing my local store, I was able to peruse a current sale flyer, and I then proceeded to review the other areas: a how-to projects section with a handful of projects and the current promotions and projects on the home screen of the app. I could create purchase lists from either section, but what I really wanted was no where to be found: a way to search for merchandise, add it to a wish/shopping list, and maybe even purchase the items for delivery or in-store pickup.

Am I asking for too much from The Home Depot in this day and age of the iPhone? Perhaps, I am being a little harsh on their first generation app, but it only seems logical to me that if I can create a wish list with their narrow scope of items included in the promotional flyer, I should be able to create a wish list from their entire catalog. Even that alone, without the ability to purchase items from within the app, would be a welcome upgrade to this current version. I suppose a database of items would make the app very large, or perhaps perusing the online database would cause too much data to be transferred to the iPhone and slow the whole interactivity to a crawl.

Major disappointment for me. I can’t recommend this app for anyone wanting an easier way to interface with The Home Depot on the iPhone because the selection is so limited. I am hopeful though, that The Home Depot will take the criticism they receive on this app and create a spectacular 2.0 version.