I would like to identify observations more but that would take that I could also use mobile app to identifying. It should improve so that it doesn’t freeze / crash all the time.
Is the new app coming to android when and will it be more stable?
(Problems include that app cant view identifications/messages that have been done to that observation, That it doesn’t accept the identification given, etc…)
I have tried 3 android phones atleast, bought this new and pricy hoping it would work but same problems seem to occur
Moved this to General as it’s more of a question than a bug.
When the new app comes to Android, the Explore functionality should be more stable than in the current Android app. I’ll say it works well for me on my iPhone, I can use some filters and go through observations and add IDs. Still not as efficient as using the Identify page on the website or than a dedicated Identify functionality in the app would be, but it works pretty well.
I also find the Android app to be very unstable / buggy, especially when using “Explore”. It often fails to record identifications, and gets slower and slower until I “force stop” it. The symptoms feel consistent with memory leaks. I know the iNat dev team has been focusing on adding “AI”, but improving the usability of the existing software might help attract and retain users.
I’m sorry the Explore section of the current Android app is prone to slowness, but I’d say this isn’t related to the ID Summaries Demo (which I think is what you’re referring to). Our mobile engineers didn’t work on it, it’s not related to mobile engineering. We’re devoting mobile resources to making the Explore functionality in the new app (which will be brought to Android) better.
I routinely hop between the Android app, and the iNat browser version on my phone.
The app observation page always has a bottom link to the desktop observation page and even though that means a lot of zooming on the browser page to read the tiny type, it seems fully-functional. Except, I’m not an identifier so I don’t know how that part functions using a phone browser in desktop mode. I use the Brave browser, which is built around the chrome engine.
But if you use a decent Android tablet, then it would almost make using the desktop iNat site much easier to work with because of the larger (relative to phone) screen.
Happy to hear that explore will be improved in the new android app. I’d do a lot more ID-ing if the android app wasn’t so slow. Look forward to it coming out.
I have tried new beta android iNat next app from Github and I did like how explore functionality has certainly expanded but it also got back in few things. I don’t know how more things will change as I have definitely seen three issues I had with it were solved by staff already without complaints from me (also should I provide feedback for it on GitHub issue from my experiences or should I just wait until hard release for such?) -
The explore kingdom select is single select unlike current app multi, so I can browse one kingdom at a time (ideally a comma separated taxon numbers accept would be very powerful here so if web users can copy their urls to app) - 1. planned
The viewable area is utilised less with unnecessary size inflation of other things, so I will be scrolling lot more than in current app for same number of observations
If I identify I would be IDing few dozens at a time, and doing additional confirmation for all those in sequence is time wasting since I already have intent and more so if my IDs are consecutive. Maybe that additional dialog should disappear from IDs in last X duration signal or someother and reappear long after I took break - as I guess the intention of that dialog is to stop misclicks and not slowdown all IDers forever
There is no badge between RG and non-rg as in current app directly from explore page, so I have to click everytime to see (simply filtering out via search of both is not my intention as I also want to correct RG mistakes and not do two searches always)
The location search is ephemeral in new app, so if app crashes or I close I have to search locations again and there is no 10 search locations list as in current app too - so full location typing everytime for all those. (Ideally not just location cache but also snapshots save of full filter in app is very powerful for IDer just like web url filter bookmarks - so I can easily switch between them and ID)
The annotation fields are not there in new app
There still is no flagging options like copyright or such (although DQA exists)
Compare taxon photos option with IDing observation side-by-side is lost. I use it very often. - 8. planned
Maybe some of these are planned or ignored entirely idk. Just my experiences as of today
also headsup for this open feature request asking for identify revamp within app