There are two major platforms in the mobile device sector right now; iPhone OS and Android OS. With usage of the latter rising every week either through adoption or new device releases the question is put to developers. When are you going to have your app on both? When are you going to make both equal?
As an example I’m going to use the Facebook application that each platform has available for download. However each are remarkably different in their feature set. The iPhone version is gorgeous and almost easier to use and navigate than the full Facebook site.
Facebook for iPhone OS
Everything you can do on the full site you can do in the app (except for changing your account settings and info). Viewing photo albums is especially nice since you can use a simple finger swipe to get to the next image. I also found out that if you have this application installed on an iPhone that you can get push notifications.
The Android version is a shell. Purely giving you enough information to drive you to the m.facebook.com site (which is another post entirely). You can view your notifications, but if they include longer comments to your posts you get the infamous ‘…’ and have to go to the mobile site to read the rest of the comment and to get context if you have a vibrant conversation going on in that area. Â Also, this version of the application has horrible notification settings; allowing you to only get updates from inbox messages, pokes (really? who still uses those), friend requests, and event invites.
At least they put out an app to the Android market, right? I’d rather use touch.facebook.com since it’s got full functionality and I can just put a bookmark shortcut on my desktop. It remains true, that at least they released it no matter how horrible it is to use.
Facebook for Android OS
Why wouldn’t you spend some time putting together an app for a user base that is excited about applications that are professionally developed?
It stands to reason that each of the platforms are very different from a user environment standpoint. While the iPhone OS is speedy because it only runs one app at a time, the Android OS gives you the same ability along with gesturing to make the two different apps appear to work the same.
So to answer the questions from above based on a user’s point of view and with another question:
When are you going to have your app on both? Why don’t you already?
When are you going to make both equal? Why aren’t they already?
