Salam Planet is Great Social Media App for Muslims [Review]

Social media is synonymous with Facebook or Twitter. Granted, you can include Instagram and Snapchat as well but they’re not as big or popular. From finding friends and sharing your favorite moments to getting news, there’s a lot you can do on them.

That begs the question if there was an app that did all of that but in a “Muslim-friendly” manner, would you use it? Better yet, is there a reason for you to switch from Facebook or Twitter to that app?

Today we review such an app, called Salam Planet.

Design and User-Friendliness

From the initial setup to navigating through the app, everything was a breeze. We didn’t encounter any sort of lag in the animations or slowdowns of any sort.

The design is reminiscent of the Facebook app on Android/iOS. The menu at the bottom lets you switch between the marketplace, Salam Play (video catalog), Notifications and Contacts.

You can tap on the 3 lines at the top left at any time to view your profile, check settings, log out and access other options.

The posts themselves look similar to Facebook posts as well, letting you swipe down to refresh and swipe up to navigate through them.

As you can see from the image above, the top menu for the main page of the app lets you go through various categories of posts.

The marketplace’s design was sort of simplistic with large non-animated tiles (other than the prayer reminder tile, which was animated) letting you go through discounts, books, shopping, and other options.

Salam Play lines up different videos from YouTube in your feed which you can swipe through at will. Once you tap the video, the video opens up in a small window with options for changing quality and captions and it also lets you open the video on YouTube directly.

Functionality

Right from the start, the app asks you to sign up using your phone number. It requires that you use call/SMS verification for signing up, while also giving you the option of signing up using Facebook.

Once done with the sign-up, the app will ask for your location to sync prayer timings with your region. This is a nice touch and is especially helpful if you already have prayer reminders set up on your phone.

We did run into a snag at the start on the main page when the posts wouldn’t load up at all on both Wi-Fi and mobile data. This issue didn’t resurface anywhere else on the app. This could be an issue on our side, but it was significant so it was worth pointing out.

Like other social media apps, it lets you create posts, while also letting you like and comment on others’ posts. You can browse the latest trends using the menu at the top of the main menu.

The sharing option lets you share your favorite posts or videos on Facebook, Twitter, Email or via SMS. It doesn’t let you share stuff on WhatsApp or other similar apps though, we’d love to see this feature added in the app soon.

The search feature on the main page seems redundant as it only lets you search for friends or contacts.

You can also do that through contacts menu next to notifications so the search in the main page doesn’t seem very useful.

Moving on, the marketplace lets you access discounts for various stores and eateries, search for restaurants (eerily similar to FoodPanda) and shop for items. You can bookmark your favorite places from there as well.

You can also find restaurants that serve Halal food in non-Muslim countries through this option.

Not many social media apps have options that let you do these things directly. You’ll have to sift through various groups and pages to do it on the Facebook app which is a hassle. This is a huge plus point of using this app.

Other key features of the app are located in the spirituality section of the marketplace menu.

There’s an Islamic calendar, Qibla finder, prayer time alert, and mosque locator there, highlighting the “Muslim-friendly” part of the app. It also lists important Dua for various occasions and situations.

Verdict

Overall the app seems like a breath of fresh air in the realm of social media. Not only does this app offer a variety of features for Muslim users, but it also adds its own twist to the conventional social media apps with its litany of marketplace options.

There were a few problems here and there but they don’t spoil the user experience.

We will definitely recommend using this app and we hope to see the app expand its user base in the future. The limited number of users might be a dealbreaker for some of the users.

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