Quibi: New billion-dollar streaming service launches with 175 shows featuring world's most famous celebrities – but leaves some early users confused

Shows are yet to make full use of their app's headline feature, say reviewers

Rob Post, Quibi chief technology officer, talks about Quibi's "Turnstyle" technology for short-form video streaming for mobile devices at the Quibi keynote address January 8, 2020 at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

Quibi, a new streaming service featuring many of the world's biggest celebrities, has finally launched – and prompted confusion among those who are the first to use it.

The company has launched in the hope of being a version of streaming services like Netflix but with a focus on mobile phones. The hype before it launched has included ads during the Super Bowl and shows starring celebrities from Reece Witherspoon to Liam Hemsworth.

The launch came with 175 new shows, ranging from scripted drama to real-life celebrity stories, all of which are short and made to be watched with the phone pointed up vertically rather than the usual landscape view. It has raised $1.75 billion to fund the shows and the app itself on the strength of that idea.

But much of the launch has focused on the strange features that are present in the app, and the unusual experience they offer.

Early reviewers complained that the portrait-viewing mode was not as revolutionary as it might seem and that the first shows did not take full advantage of the feature. Vox's Emily Todd VanDerWerff, for instance, described the "difficult to watch" in many cases and said that shows had not thought out how shows would appear in portrait.

The actual technical features did however win praise from site Tom's Guide, which said that switching between the landscape and portrait modes was "seamless", because of a feature called Turnstile that allows the shows to immediately flip up to support the rotated screen.

Quibi is yet to introduce some of the promised features that will come to that portrait mode, such as the ability to flip up the screen and see an app on a character's phone. The company has also said that shows in the future will use the clock, GPS and sensors of the smartphone itself to customise what is happening in the show.

The app also includes a host of limitations that are intended to ensure the viewing experience is focused on mobile. Users are unable to take screenshots of shows, for instance – a restriction that is also present on competitors like Netflix – and cannot send what they are watching to a television, leaving people forced to watch on their phone even if they have a much larger TV.

Quibi only has a mobile app, which means there is no way to watch its shows on any other platform. It has neither the ability cast over services like AirPlay or ChromeCast, or an app on smart TVs or streaming boxes.

The Verge also noted that the app does not include support for profiles, such as those found on Netflix, which allow numerous people to keep their viewing history separate when sharing their accounts. A login can also only be used by one phone at each time, meaning that it is not possible to share passwords and watch at the same time.