Just a minor gripe but a lot people on the bottom half of the planet get annoyed when Americans assume that everyone works on the same seasons.
@mikemills we mean no offense! We’re keenly aware of all of the awesome people on the bottom half planet that use and support Skritter, and we thank you!
“Summer” just happens to be when a lot majority of our user base is on break from school. Subscriptions are also lowest during this time so it’s the best time for us to try and jam major updates.
@mikemills Sure, just let me know. Ideally we’d like to switch to a solution that loads in the background without interrupting the user experience quite so much, but with Skritter things are sequential so the approach taken right now is the safest way. I have also noticed things tend to be noticeably slower with Google App Engine in the evenings (PST) compared with the morning.
No offence taken. But summer is months away. It’s -1 here this morning. (Celsius of course - North America is pretty well the only place on the planet that doesn’t use metric.). 
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After switching to the Android client from iOS for a month now, I have some more detailed feedback on areas to improve:
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Start up time – as mentioned above, it takes minutes to start. It would be worth using Mixpanel to track the time taken for users to go from starting the app to studying, or at least until the Study button has displayed. For me, on iOS, this is fast enough that I don’t notice. On Android, it is typically 3-8 minutes, which is basically unusable. I’ve been using Skritter for a few years now, and have many lists and a lot of characters to study. This may impact startup times, however I feel you should be fast for your advanced users as well as new users, otherwise you’ll suffer retaining subscribers.
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Flow – once started, the iOS study loop gets you more into a sense of flow. This could be tracked by measuring session length across different cohorts / user profiles. I’m finding the time I spent in the Android version to be less. I have a few theories, however they should be tested out with wider user groups. This includes things like auto advancing when correct. The number of taps required to study on Android vs iOS is almost 2x.
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Study feedback – the Android app misses out on the fun little bubbles that let you know you’ve hit particular session milestones. eg. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour Amazing! These are simple and help motivate longer sessions and thus more study.
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Character writing – there are a number of issues with the character writing on Android. These include a general lag. When drawing strokes on iOS, it feels like writing. On Android, you need to pause a bit, as the display is not as fast as your finger. There are some glitches in recognising some characters, such as the hook in 方, that slow down writing speed. Also missing is tooltips on common mistakes, such as “missing hook”, that help with writing on iOS.
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General speed – beyond character writing, the other views in the main study loop also lag a bit. I notice this on the tone area the most. Focus on performance here should also improve session length.
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Visual Design – overall feels like a very spartan looking app. I’m hoping that the summer release picks up new visual design from http://html5.skritter.com/study, or from the iOS app.
For reference, I have been using an iPhone 5 for iOS testing, and a Mi 4 and Nexus 7 for Android tests.
I am optimistic that the summer release will be able to show improvements across these areas, and could take Android to on par or beyond the iOS app. I feel like there is a massive opportunity to grow the Skritter community by having an amazing Android app. If there is more I can do to help, please let me know (either here or my email associated with my account)
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@1113 Thanks for taking the time to provide us some detailed feedback. The new layouts that you’re seeing for the web are going to be making their way to Android. The new layout has also prompted us to work on Android data syncing and general memory management, so they will be rolled out together.
I’m not going to comment on all of the points you brought up, but I do fully acknowledge that they are all very valid points that we will be addressing. It seems quite a few of them could, at their core, be related to performance. It sounds like the flow issue might be helped out with better performance and also allowing prompts to automatically advance similar to iOS.
How do you feel the performance compares between the Mi 4 and Nexus 7 regarding Skritter? I only ask because we have a Nexus 7 for testing, but not the other device.
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I hadn’t been using my Nexus 7 (2013 model) recently, so ran some startup tests. My previous approach had been to start it, do something else, and then use it later, so I didn’t have startup times.
First time, it took 18 minutes to load. I then killed the app, and re-opened it. The second time, I gave up after 24 minutes and the main screen has still not loaded.
When it had loaded the first time, there was some lag on character writing, however at different spots than on the Mi 4. This may be due to different Android versions. The Nexus 7 is on 5.5.1, and my Mi 4 is on Android 4.4.4 and MIUI 5.7.2.
The recent Android updates seem to have improved the writing speed on my Mi4. Makes for a nicer experience once it loads.
Any news on the updated version?
There are still no example sentences on android. It has been such a long time, for a paid service not acceptable. Android is the largest mobile system .
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