iNat Next for android: comments and suggestions

Hello everyone !

First, I need to say two things:

  1. I use both iNat classic and iNat Next on Android (Pixel 6 pro phone, latest OS and apps updates).

  2. This is not a rant ! Absolutely not: I love iNat and I sincerely think that it is the best thing that happened to the naturalist world since the Victorian era. Really. :star_struck:

The feature of iNat Next I absolutely love is the real-time CV: Extremely useful for me (and everyone I contaminated with iNaturalist ! :rofl: ).

I’m impressed that it does work, even when offline, which is often the case in the neck of the woods, or in mountains…Kudos to the devs for achieving this !

I also do find the confidence % display more than useful too: for me, there is no such thing as “too much information” !

For everything else I currently prefer the “classic” app…

YES, I perfectly understand that the android app is unfinished and in alpha/beta stage, but then it seems the perfect time to comment and criticize (in the positive sense), in order to contribute to what will be, in time, a great upgrade to the “classic” app !

I have made a lot of feedback over the past 12 months (and more), and I’m still waiting to see most things change. (Yes, I know, unfinished Android app, iPhone first etc… still.)

So I’m posting this here as an open letter to the devs and the community, in the hope it will spark something.

Feel free to comment, disagree, suggest ! And thanks for bearing with me !


Missing Features that exist in the “classic” app (and that are probably in the works):

-On the species page, we have a lot more information, namely all the graphs (seasonality, etc…). Sorely missing in Next.

-On the observation page, we could swipe from picture to picture in an obs, then swipe to the next obs in the recordset with the same gesture. Not anymore in Next: you have to exit the obs then click on another one. Slow and impractical.

-On the explore page there was a clear RG mark. Missing in iNat Next. Should be present on all miniatures, maybe with a clear color coding, RG=green, Needs ID=orange…

Selection of bugs:

Globally iNat Next feels sluggish, sometimes taking several seconds (up to 10-15 !!!) to answer commands, all through the app….

On the explore page, the top of the screen is displayed below the status bar, and “all organisms” is unreachable.

The CV camera zoom function is quite disturbing on my phone: it uses an unorthodox “one finger zoom” function that I never saw anywhere else (maybe there is a reason for everyone else using a two fingers pinch-to-zoom ?).

Using two fingers simply crashes the camera.

The zoom button on the right side does nothing for 3x (but do work for 0.5 and 1x).

Zooming in too much loses the focus, so why allow it ?

And I still wonder why there is a selfie mode… :face_savoring_food:

On the species page when you expand the map and zoom in past a certain level, the map zooms back to worldview, without displaying observations anymore. You have to exit the screen and re-enter to get the observations displayed (provided you don’t zoom too close, of course).

From that same map, you cannot get to an observation page by clicking on the dot, which would be useful (and is available on the map from explore mode).

Ergonomy

The Activity screen is mostly taken up by unnecessary text:

“XXXX added an identification to an observation by you”

Of course it’s an observation by me: I’m on the “my content” screen…

Maybe it would be more useful if it said something like:

“XXXX confirms your ID as being (species name)”

Or

“XXXX disagrees with (species name) and suggests (species name)”

This is compounded by the fact that currently, to get any more information you have to enter the observation screen, and, as you can’t swipe to the next obs, you have to get back, then wait, wait, wait for the notification to be marked “read” and open the next one… Rince repeat… slow.

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Cannot add obs to projects - they tell me. (I use the website)

Selfie mode? Ask the mushroom people - that is how you get a picture of the gills, without knocking the mushroom over.

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Next i mainly used on iphone but the drawbacks are as big as the benefits so there is no gain.
Activity does not contain any valueble information like countrycode, statecode, date, old value, new value, comunitvalue or confirming/Not.

My ideal app would be a copy of the “wiki uploader” who has an duplicate tester included. I do like the easy way it is to split or add double photos to an observation.

I have an iphone SE so efficient use of space would be appreciated. I think a lot of text is giving confusion in stead of information.

I didn’t know they released Next for Android.

Edit: oh I see, you’re a tester.

I use the unfinished version of iNat Next that can be found on Github (thanks to the devs for that !)

It can be installed at the same time as the “classic” iNat App, and both can be used without conflicts or problems, so it is a great way to get it now (as long as you are OK with using an imperfect/unfinished app).

In my view the CV is so useful it makes me forget all the “unfinished” side.

Selfie mode for mushrooms ! Of course… Thanks for pointing this out to me.

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There’s now a Next for Android?!

It’s still in testing, see here for how to get it:

Link is here: https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative/releases
The “Assets” dropdown menu is below each new release announcement.

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