Flyertalk iPhone App Feedback
 

:( Really hard to understand. But thanks for the update

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but the app, at least for me, crashes and quits after I read a new message.

The chain of events goes as follows:

1) I open the app and see at the top I have a new message.
2) I click on the new-message banner.
3) I read the message.
4) I use the menu to go to the home screen again, where it still shows that I have a new message.
5) I think at the point it tries to remove the new message banner, the app just crashes/quits.

What phone are you using?

I've reported this to our app development team. Thank you!

Are plans made to update the app for iPhone 5's increased screen real estate?

Nothing I've heard particular to more screen space. Hopefully we'll see this develop over time as screens get larger; but devs also have to keep in mind, not everyone gets the newest phone all the time ;)

Bad excuse.

Exactly zero of the iPhone apps I use on anything resembling a regular basis have not been updated to take advantage of the iPhone 5's screen size. That excuse does not hold water.

+1

I mostly ignore this particular thread, but when I saw the top response I had to laugh. The change is generally dead simple. The flippant answer feels insulting, actually.

No insult meant; I don't know how an app distinguishes between one phone or another, so I don't know how optimizing a single app for a bigger screen doesn't hurt the users of the smaller screen phones. Again, no update specifically for iP5 that I'm aware of.

Ah OK. So you are not a developer and are not interested in asking or putting this forward. Got it. :td:

The change is simple to implement and it maintains compatibility with older iPhone/iPod Touch models.

OK, some background on the apps might be helpful here.

As I've stated before in this thread, the apps are developed by a separate group from those who work on the FlyerTalk website.

Updates to the website can be done ad-hoc, based on user need and feature availability, and the site is in a constant state of improvement. Little things are done fast, big things take more time.

The apps are a totally different animal. There's no "easy" or "simple" or fast change to the FT apps. They happen on a schedule that is maintained by the internal apps team, and while we can do things like report bugs and feature requests whenever, the changes incorporating these things (if any) will happen when they happen. If the next release is not scheduled for 3 months or 6 months, we won't see any changes until then. This is partly determined by the complexity in getting new app releases approved by external entities, such as Apple. We can't control that. When we want to update FlyerTalk.com, we just do it.

If optimizing the app to take advantage of a bigger screen on newer phones is something that app developers generally do, that will happen here too, I'm sure. I can and will ask about it, but this feels like something that will either happen (in time, whenever they have scheduled this change), or it won't.

As an iPhone 5 user myself, I certainly empathize with the desire for this FT app to "keep up" with the technology. We'll do as much of that as we can, within the constraints of other considerations. The good news is, the bigger these screens get, the easier it is to simply use the full version of the site on your mobile browser, be that Safari, Chrome, or what have you.

Paul

Sounds like an office politics problem at IB that someone high up at IB needs to resolve or approve the resources to resolve.

There's no reason an app can only be updated once every three or six months. The average App Store review process is currently running about six days.

I get that your department doesn't really have control over the app experience as it's a different group that manages that product, but someone who does have control needs to understand the current process is leaving a lot to be desired.

^^^

Since IB/FT released a new app version last night, I'm closing this thread. Please continue the discussion in:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/techn...-feedback.html

Regards Oliver2002
Senior Mod