I recently bought an Android phone. Yes, I did.
About two years back I got contacted for the first time about making an Android version of iMalt. I looked into Android development, their Marketplace setup and sales figures and quickly decided that the whole platform was too immature and the potential market too small. My limited time for development was much better spend on iOS development. Since then I have gotten many requests for the Android version of iMalt but every time I have looked into it, I decided to wait. However, time has changed. The crowd of Android users have grown too big to be ignored. And fortunately development for Android has become more easy. Furthermore the Android Marketplace has improved a lot. Also, I like the idea that users can switch between iPhones and Android phones and still have access to their tasting notes and collection via the iTasteNote Cloud.
So I bought the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus (the second Google phone) with the new version (4.0) of Android called Ice Cream Sandwich. I will not go into many details about Android and the phone but the biggest difference I have noticed between Android and iOS is that Android allows much more customization of the user interface. For example I installed a nice “live wallpaper” for Christmas with waving Christmas trees and falling snow. You also have much more control of your home screen where you can arrange widgets and icons as you like. Some users may see this “openess” as a big advantage while others will find the more “limited” iOS easier to use.
Without to much trouble I installed the Android development environment on my Mac and wrote the first few test apps. Then I was set for developing iMalt for Android. Basically I wanted iMalt for Android to look and feel exactly like iMalt for the iPhone. Bad idea. First I wanted to create the bottom tab bar. I searched Google for answers and found that Android users expect tabs to be at the top of the screen. Okay, no problem. Then I created a list view but struggled to find the back button once I tapped a list item. In iOS it shows up automatically but in Android, I later found out, you always use a hardware button to go back. Hmm okay. I concluded that I needed to read the Android design guidelines.
Apple has very strict design guidelines that you MUST follow. In an earlier version of iMalt I wanted to use the e-mail compose button to create an e-mail with whisky listings. When the button was pushed, I gave the user a choice whether to create the e-mail in plain text or HTML formatted, before the compose view was shown. Apple rejected the app saying that when pushing the e-mail compose button you must show the compose view immediately. Android design guidelines are just that – guidelines. You can choose to follow them or not and I see this as a problem in terms of user friendliness. When you open most iOS apps you instinctively know what to do whereas Android apps does not have a common look and feel.
Google has tried to improve this situation by defining some design patterns that you can choose to follow. I came to the conclusion that the dashboard design pattern fitted iMalt best. Basically you have a dashboard with up to six icons/buttons that takes you to the most important places in the app. This way the user will quickly learn the different elements of the app. Then you have an action bar at the top where you can put the title of the screen and controls like search. Much like the iOS navigation bar. At the bottom you must have an area that present “something new” to the user every time he/she opens the app so that the user keeps coming back to the app. Quite clever in my opinion.
In the case of iMalt it was obvious to present user ratings of whiskies as they come in. But I wanted to take it a bit further. I therefore chose to also show when a user opens or empties a bottle and when a user adds a bottle to his/her collection and wish list. In that way all users can get a feeling of which whiskies are most popular and that might help you decide which malt to buy next. Now I find myself starting iMalt several times a day just to check the updates 
I actually like the idea so much that I just had to implement itin iMalt for iOS. So the dashboard and the live updates will be the new major feature of iMalt version 2.2. But wait, there is more:
- CSV export
- Statistics view
- Re-ordering of single malts root menu
- Minor UI changes
- Twitter support (tweet your ratings)
I hope to have iMalt 2.2 ready by the end of January and iMalt HD 2.2 (without the dashboard) in February. My goal is to have iMalt for Android ready this summer.
