Android Release 0.18.5 (16 December)

Release time!  Yes.  We have been testing this one for the last week, and dying to get it out to you.  It is faster… much faster.  Hopefully, none of you will still find scrolling the A-Z list a boring task.  We now need to bring some graphical improvements, but at least it is fully useable (well we think so, and hope to hear back from you).  Plus a few other bits and pieces.  The bad news is that we still have some work to do on the new web interface (especially automatic merge of Facebook contacts) before we release it… so we are pushing that back by a week.  In the meantime the “old” web provides many of the basic features.

Improvements in new release

Here are the things we think now work much better.

• Scroll speed.  Back to something really useable in A-Z.  Much improved in Latest (some further improvements still needed here)
• Sync speed.  In our tests, we are back to 100 contacts a minute… but have noticed some instances where it slows down.  We are investigating for next release
• Landscape view with tactile and visual feedback.  Click on a contact and see which worlds they are in.  Drag them to a world, and get visual cue that they are now part of that world.  Drag them back to it again, and they move out of it.
• Add contacts to “my circle” directly from landscape view
• Multi-clients now managed on Android.  You can connect to as many ON clients as you wish (android, web…) and you only appear “disconnected” once you have disconnected from all of them
• Transparent avatars to show contacts who are not currently online… so you know their last status, but you also know it may not be 100% up-to-date
• Tap contact pop-up shows last interaction with that contact (when you or they last called, messaged…)
• Roster of people you are sharing real time status with now much more reliable (we would like to say 100% reliable, but will only know after much more testing)

Known limitations

These are the things that should really be part of the release, but aren’t there yet.

• Roster (ie the people you are sharing real time status) may still not always be correct – ie some of your contacts may not be getting your status update.  We haven’t yet seen the problem, but from experience, we know it may show up in some bizarre cases
• Avatars still not being shared (this is in progress for the 23 December release)
• Still cannot automatically add new contacts synced from gmail or exchange.  We may have a partial solution for 23 December, but full solution for in the new year.
• App crashes (but in a non-critical sense, ie restarts from where it was in a couple of seconds) in a number of cases.  Yes, we know.  Not good.  We are working on it.

Plan for Dec 23 Release

Here is a summary of what we will be working on for our last release this year.

• More speed, more stability.
• Avatar sharing

We then plan to use the period to 4 January to beef-up on some background research while a number of the team take a well deserved break.  From 4 January, we will be back to our “cruise” speed of one release every 3 weeks.

So please let us know what are the things you would like us to be working on.  Our current list for research ahead of the new year is:

• reloading users short-cuts and widgets upon installation
• widgetisation of ON (long term project)
• uploading your contacts from a standard phone (ie the one you had before you got your brand new android with ON)
• group chat
• IM connections to third party IMs (MSN…)
• … Other?  Please let us know!  Head to our feedback page with your ideas.