I recently switched to Android from ios and literally everything on 1password Android is vastly inferior to the ios version. It's like the ios app is developed by a crack team of experts while the Android app is developed by a part time intern working for free.
With respect to our Android developers they have an uphill climb to catch up to iOS. Our iOS application has been in development for something like 4 years now, and several years before that as a previous incarnation (version 4 was a complete rewrite).
Our iOS application also shares a great deal of underpinnings with Mac. That means when our Mac team implements something super great our iOS team gets some of that grunt work for free. Then it becomes an interface deal in many cases which may not be easy at all but at least some of the work was done.
The Android team, well, they have to implement everything themselves and it's simply going to take time. Combine this with UI changes and stuff that mean we have to rewrite existing things to match up with that and it just becomes very overwhelming sometimes. I work on our iOS application and it's incredible the amount of stuff you can do in a short period of time because groundwork has been laid for years. I don't envy our Android developers because they have none of that to work with. I'm sure it's both overwhelming and exhilarating for them.
I guess that's a long answer but really, it's simply going to take some time for our Android developers to catch up. I know it's tough as a user to see one so far ahead of the other but I hope the above information puts some of it into perspective. They'll get there :)
Hi Kyle, thank you for participating in this conversation. I am sure everyone here appreciates it.
It is true that as an android dev one has to implement many things themselves. It's an unpleasant part of developing for Android that Google does very little to address.
The simplest approach you could take would be to copy and implement the design patterns presented in Google's material design guidelines. Yes, it is unfortunate they are guidelines and not SDK. However, there are enough patterns to provide a superior experience to the jumbled mess of an application that it is right now.
This is just a 1 minute recommendation and of course open to argument. However, simply redoing the app in a generic style adhering to these guidelines would be a drastic improvement.
Thank you in advance for doing an android app in the first place.
Happy to participate. I read Hacker News regularly myself so getting a chance to jump in and be involved is always fun :)
A design overhaul is definitely in the works. I think, but can't confirm, that it will alleviate some of your concerns. I don't have a time frame for it but given we're saying that the 1Password for Teams beta is going to last about 3 months we'd like to have Android ready to go for that launch as well. They're hard at work on making it happen now.
Thanks for the feedback! We're always happy to receive it and pass it along. It's how we drive development in a lot of cases. Teams came about from requests from our users. Multiple vaults came about from requests from our users. A lot of it is driven by user feedback so don't be afraid to send it in. No promises everything will be done but the more people that say they want a particular feature the higher that gets bumped up the priority list.
