September 27, 2012 at 21:35Mobile applications from Surfingbird
Recently, we finally released the application for Android , and even earlier the application for the iPad (and even earlier for the iPhone, but we won’t talk about it, it's scary).
And now, in principle, I just want to brag a little.
iPad application uses an interface that seems innovative to us :-) Navigating logically nested terms looks like interface layers overlapping one another. A slide to the right removes the current upper layer, tap on the desired layer hides all the upper ones (sometimes the upper layers do not completely cover the lower ones).
Navigation is convenient, we like it. It looks something like this (approximately 500KB of traffic): (by clicking on the full-sized png, which gives out that we are suckers and we only have an iPad 2 64Gb 3G.)
The application is friendly and at the first start it shows a hint: And here is the main page (after login / registration): Of course, it works in landscape mode too :-) The Android version presented us with a surprise - suddenly among its users there is a share of versions 4.0. * And 4.1 turned out to be more than 50%! For comparison, according to the same Google Play, the share of such systems on average in the Social category is less than 30%. By 4.1, the skew is generally five times. Apparently, this confirms our theory that the target audience of our site is young successful businessmen who have either the Galaxy S III, or the iPhone 5, or the new iPad. Hurrah!
Although, after mailing about new applications, they asked a lot about the version for Windows Phone (and twice for Symbian and once for Blackberry) - apparently, the new Lumia made a good impression, and they are preparing in advance for a platform change.
Now about the application itself. It is pretty (and, of course, premium-exclusive). The iPhone version will be redone, apparently, in a similar way. It looks simple, clean, functional: According to the screenshots, by the way, it is clear that when using the application, signal reception is improved and the battery is charging.
Applications are accepted by users warmly. The main problem is simple - users do not understand how the service works and complain about things such as a) slow-loading pages (the mobile Internet is to blame), b) the lack of website optimization for mobile platforms (if we load the content to ourselves, we will kill).
What to do with this is not very clear. Well, perhaps in the information about the next update they gave a link to the FAQ .
The second problem is already painful for us - that in the AppStore, that in Google Play it is impossible to communicate with users; AppStore also does not provide information about the total number of installations - some kind of fascism.
Well, checking for updates for three weeks in the same AppStore, and, well ...
Something like this.
In the end, we will share the main planned feature - we will make it possible to preload several pages to read, which should partially solve the problems with mobile Internet.
Links:
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=en.surfingbird
itunes.apple.com/us/app/surfingbird-hd/id549111426
And now, in principle, I just want to brag a little.
iPad application uses an interface that seems innovative to us :-) Navigating logically nested terms looks like interface layers overlapping one another. A slide to the right removes the current upper layer, tap on the desired layer hides all the upper ones (sometimes the upper layers do not completely cover the lower ones).
Navigation is convenient, we like it. It looks something like this (approximately 500KB of traffic): (by clicking on the full-sized png, which gives out that we are suckers and we only have an iPad 2 64Gb 3G.)
The application is friendly and at the first start it shows a hint: And here is the main page (after login / registration): Of course, it works in landscape mode too :-) The Android version presented us with a surprise - suddenly among its users there is a share of versions 4.0. * And 4.1 turned out to be more than 50%! For comparison, according to the same Google Play, the share of such systems on average in the Social category is less than 30%. By 4.1, the skew is generally five times. Apparently, this confirms our theory that the target audience of our site is young successful businessmen who have either the Galaxy S III, or the iPhone 5, or the new iPad. Hurrah!
Although, after mailing about new applications, they asked a lot about the version for Windows Phone (and twice for Symbian and once for Blackberry) - apparently, the new Lumia made a good impression, and they are preparing in advance for a platform change.
Now about the application itself. It is pretty (and, of course, premium-exclusive). The iPhone version will be redone, apparently, in a similar way. It looks simple, clean, functional: According to the screenshots, by the way, it is clear that when using the application, signal reception is improved and the battery is charging.
Applications are accepted by users warmly. The main problem is simple - users do not understand how the service works and complain about things such as a) slow-loading pages (the mobile Internet is to blame), b) the lack of website optimization for mobile platforms (if we load the content to ourselves, we will kill).
What to do with this is not very clear. Well, perhaps in the information about the next update they gave a link to the FAQ .
The second problem is already painful for us - that in the AppStore, that in Google Play it is impossible to communicate with users; AppStore also does not provide information about the total number of installations - some kind of fascism.
Well, checking for updates for three weeks in the same AppStore, and, well ...
Something like this.
In the end, we will share the main planned feature - we will make it possible to preload several pages to read, which should partially solve the problems with mobile Internet.
Links:
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=en.surfingbird
itunes.apple.com/us/app/surfingbird-hd/id549111426