For every useful, functional tool in the App Store lies a piece of software that serves no other purpose than to kill time. From games and sight gags, to visual teasers and flashlights, the App Store is filled with free and low-cost ways to make your commute—or morning meeting—that much bearable.
Enter TalkBubbles. Designed to integrate with the iPhone’s camera and photo library, TalkBubbles does exactly what you’d expect an app with its name to do: add comic-style dialogue to pictures. At first, it’s a fun app that offers a pleasant array of options. Bubbles come in three shapes and a rainbow of colors; dark or colored shadows can be added, too, all selected from a series of spinable reels. Text is applied in a similar fashion, with some 50 fonts available in the standard sizes, up to 72 point.
Adding bubbles is relatively easy as well. Simply choose a picture from your library or snap a fresh one (that will not be saved unless “shared”), and double-tap the screen. Bubbles can be resized by pinching the screen and wiped away by shaking your iPhone. But the interface is often slow to respond; bubbles quickly take on minds of their own, and it’s extremely difficult to create the desired shape and size. In my tests, I often had to settle for a second-rate bubble despite numerous pinches and prods.
Finally, TalkBubbles includes a Share button that does little more than save the doctored photo to your phone’s library of images, since Apple apparently won’t let developers integrate with its Mail app.
Sadly, what’s fun at first quickly changes into a tedious, confounding experience that rarely results in anything worth tapping home about.
A slow interface and bubbles that do as they please, make what should fun, an excercies in futility.
Good time-waster. Fun way to add captions to photos. 
Buggy, clunky interface. Bubbles slow to respond. Gets old real fast.
