After upgrading my very old smart phone to the HTC One earlier this year I discovered a serious problem that needs fixing in Android apps: disconnectivity.
The HTC One has a wifi issue, serious issues meaning that without it being fixed, it can’t keep a signal unless you are on-top an access point. Sitting a mere 2 meters from my AP at home is often not enough to be connected. This can be a little annoying at times, and for most people with data plans this might not be a problem.
The biggest issue is not with the wifi, although it helped with discovering the real issue, it’s with the apps I run:
They don’t work!
I don’t mean none of them work, without an offline mode and connectivity they are useless. There are some notable exceptions, such as the BBC News, The Times of India, GMail, Pocket, and the Facebook app — which I no longer use. Other than these most apps fail when they are not connected, even when they notified you of something while you were connected.
Even Google Maps, which can’t work offline without having the map, will work if you have accessed the maps at some point in the past.
Twitter I consider one of the worst offenders only needs to store a maximum of a couple of hundred bytes, the data which it already downloaded and pushed to the phone’s notifications.
Offline is not a Feature!
Offline, like security, is not a sexy feature. And it shouldn’t even be a feature, it should be a building block.
By Daniël W. Crompton (@webhat), Director of Technology at Oplerno — a global institution empowering real-world practitioners, adjunct lecturers, professors, and aspiring instructors to offer affordable, accessible, high-quality education to students from all corners of the globe.
