The Vita isn't just good for gaming you know, it can do so much more thanks to its slowly growing application store. At day one, only the likes of Facebook and Flickr are available and its the latter we are going to concentrate on here. Why not Facebook you ask? Well because Flickr does a much better job of showing exactly what can be done with an application on the new console, having a particularly swish UI.

Flickr

Format

PlayStation Vita

Price

Free

Where

PS Store

Before we get started on this one, we have a bone to pick with Yahoo and Flickr: please, please, please sort out the way devices are approved to Flickr. It took us 20 minutes to get even close to getting the site to let us sign in using our Vita and in the end we gave up. If you manage it, let us know!

Right so on to the app itself. At the top is a search bar that allows you to look for photos, people and groups on the Flickr website. It works well enough and gets you to where you want to be going. Below that is a your photos section. Here is your photostream and other relevant snaps and sets. We would talk about this more but Flickr seemed to be denying us access today. History will show what you are looking at and the explore bar is for Flickr's explored shots. 

In settings you can adjust each one of these bars so they appear in the order you would prefer, as well as add in other information such as recent activity, uploads and favourites. It works very simply and allows a bit of extra customisation to the app. The arrows to the right of each bar will expand them in quite a swish animation that, a bit like live tiles in WP7, lists all the photos in a Ken Burns effect. 

When you do actually come to tapping an images, a small res version will load up with text about the image to the right of it. From here you can comment, favourite and see what groups the shot appears in. It is all very nicely done and incredibly smooth. Finally tapping on a shot will bring it up so it fills the Vita's screen, you can then pinch to zoom and pan around. All very nice indeed and makes the Vita a useful little portfolio device because it is portable and has a nice display. 

Good stuff from Flickr then and a strong start to the app landscape for the Vita. Just get that signing in sorted and get it sorted now. 

What do you think of the Flickr app? Let us know in the comments below ...