Aargh why is the Android app so poor?

[FoldyRoll]

Having recently switched from an iPhone to Android I'm amazed how poor the Android app is. The iOs app is just right; all the essential features without bloat and you can pop on to the desktop version for messaging or advanced search for example. In comparison, the Android app is pretty much unusable.
Problems I've noticed

• if other posters use formatting it comes out as a load of asterisks and acute symbols
• all links say 'click here' instead of showing a url or description as they do on iOs. Many links don't work at all and without a descriptor can't be googled so you can follow the thread
• images in threads can't be expanded so are usually unreadable
• watched threads don't show when there are new posts
• something in posts (punctuation maybe?) renders as mumsnet emojis so posts are littered with stars or gin bottles. I'm pretty sure it's not on purpose!

Any plans to make the Android app user experience as good as the iOs one please @MNHQ?

Yes to all the above! But I have only used Android, not iOS so didn't know we were getting a rough deal!

I second that. I have an iPhone for work and Android for personal, and the Android app. is just nowhere near the iPhone. It comes up with a blank screen regularly (Samsung Note 9), the colours aren't the same, you can't 'Watch' a thread from the main listing (you have to open the article in order to Watch it), and you can't flip the thread in Android, really annoying when you have to scroll through long threads. Nor can you share from Android, but you can from the iPhone.

Basically, the Android app. sucks, and MNHQ need to throw some money at it.

And relax...

Leafy - I can flip a thread in the Android - it is one of hte options that comes up when you click the + button. But if you have previously bookmarked somewhere in the thread it gets totally confused!

Gah I tried to do a compare and contrast of the same post on the two versions of the app but clearly the Android one didn't post.
Here's the iOS version

Nope. Doesn't want to post Android screenshot.

Trying again via the mobile website.

It gets almost unusable sometimes, it's ridiculous. I posted about it too and got a bit of a hand-wavey response with no follow-up.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/3705200-is-the-android-app-just-not-a-priority-for-mnhq

Yeah, that's a bit of a wishy washy response isn't it goodwinter? Sorry, I didn't realise there was already a thread because I couldn't scroll down that far. 🤦‍♀️

haha yes, another fun feature of the Android app - you can't see more than one page of threads, it just repeats the entire first page and then stops!

Ah - the only being able to see one page on repeat, and half of those are usually the sticky threads that you're not interested in but can't hide in the app!

Hi,

Thanks for reporting this. We'll try to find out some more information about this for you.

Any success @soniamumsnet?

Hi @FoldyRoll sorry to hear you've been having problems. Are you using the latest version of the app please?

Hi,

Just dropping in to let you know that we're attempting to fix a few bugs with this app in the next few weeks.

Thanks so much for your patience.

That's good news. Thanks Sonia

FoldyRoll - let us know whether things improve over the next few weeks .