Why Monzo think Android app is on par with iOS

Fair enough :slight_smile:

iOS have a whole toolbar UI with multiple filter options (category, people (?), amount greater than/less than, attachment, locations etc) whereas Android just has a plain text input.

As I remember, iOS had a menu which showed the sneak peeks, separate to the community links. It was promised that this was ā€œcoming soonā€ to Android. Hereā€™s the blog post: https://monzo.com/blog/2018/05/09/sneak-peeks/

On iOS, I think thereā€™s an information popup on the graph which shows the balance/spent at that particular point. This does not exist on Android. I donā€™t know if itā€™s just Android, but the graph annoyingly bounces/snaps when scrolling.

Also - thereā€™s no widget for Android. I understand the iOS one is buggy, but at least one exists :slight_smile:

4 Likes

It might have changed since I used the Android app, but the search function on Android was far, FAR less powerful than iOS.

Merely having a ā€œSearchā€ bar does not make it equal or ā€œparityā€.

2 Likes

Thatā€™s a fair point - the iOS version does have itā€™s fair share of bugs however so these both may end up getting some love in future.

I believe this is on Android - itā€™s at the bottom of help :slight_smile:

It doesnā€™t need to - the same information is displayed :slight_smile: As you scroll back youā€™ll see the balance/spent today update.

I donā€™t know when/if we would do an Android widget - I think widgets in general have become a lot less popular.

These are the same options as on Android :+1:

1 Like

ā€œmayā€ :cry: I would say Android search needs some love, no matter how buggy the iOS one is.

Just the link to the community section, yes. But not the built-in functionality as described in the blog post.

OK! :+1:

Thatā€™a a shame :confused:

Just wanted to chime in with some answers here.

Search on iOS is fairly broken. Itā€™s buggy, gets stuff wrong, and needs a complete re-write. Thereā€™s no point us recreating a broken feature on Android. When we re-do Search, weā€™ll do it on both platforms.

Sneak Peeks, as it exists right now on iOS, canā€™t be recreated on Android in exactly the same way. Something to do with the tool we used to build it - I donā€™t know the details but the plan is to rebuilt it in a platform agnostic way. @naji may have some more info on this.

Weā€™ve discussed this before but if we are going by the strictest definition of the term ā€œparityā€ then it was probably the wrong term for us to use. Weā€™ve put in a huge amount of work with The Big List project to bring the main things that people requested to Android, but the apps arenā€™t (and probably never will be) exactly the same.

I personally like that we have NFC activation on Android as well as granular notifications. Yes, the lack of these is a platform limitation of iOS but at least for the former, we still had to build it in.

1 Like

I think that explanation is sufficient for me, and I would agree.

To me this is a case where you can say parity because itā€™s not something you have control over :slight_smile:

Tell me youā€™re not serious or you have not looked at iOS app :joy:

1 Like

Letā€™s try to avoid this conversation becoming circular, folks. Thereā€™s really not a huge amount to say that hasnā€™t been covered in the 89 posts above this one :grinning:

4 Likes

What about notes for faster payment service payments? Theyā€™re possible on Android, but on iOS the notes field is shown as the ā€˜Referenceā€™ field and is uneditable. This looks strange when you edit the notes on Android to add hashtags to the payment!

And then of course youā€™ve still got a few areas in the Android app that ask for the card PIN rather than using the fingerprint.

4 Likes

Where are these? :eyes: This shouldnā€™t be the case I donā€™t think

Cancelling scheduled payments is the one I can recall off the top of my head, I think thereā€™s another.

There are no widgets on Android.

I donā€™t know how weā€™re supposed to tell Monzo what features one platform has that the other doesnā€™t. I donā€™t have an iPhone to compare with.
Surely Monzo know what each app has? I shouldnā€™t need to find out by accident that iPhone has widgets then raise it.

A couple of things I can think of off the top of my head that iOS have and Android doesnā€™t:

  • Sneak peaks section of app (not community).
  • Advanced searching.
  • Bill splitting.
  • Changing pot pictures.
  • Full initials for Monzo contacts without a profile picture - Android only has the first letter of the first name, making it really difficult to tell Monzo contacts without profile pictures apart.
  • Transactions categorised as expenses have ā€œExpensesā€ appear under the transaction in the main feed.

NB: I know some of these have been included above already.

1 Like

I still get asked for pin when transferring between JA and when paying via bank transfer.

Edit: reinstalled, ticked fingerprint Auth box, seems okay now.

2 Likes

Sure :slight_smile: I think itā€™s more helpful to ask however. For instance, above I made the assumption that since iOS and Android both had search that was fine - I know how the iOS search works and use Android day to day and I personally have no issues. However, several other people have different opinions on that and think we should try to make the Android search a bit more granular. As @simonb has pointed out, weā€™re unlikely to rebuild the Android search to match the iOS version as there are a few issues with it. There would probably be a cross platform project to rebuild it on both platforms which will take a while to scope and set up :slight_smile:

Thatā€™s a good shout :+1: Iā€™m not quite sure what happened to this actually.

3 Likes

Generally yes, but I think not in this specific case. It was Monzoā€™s choice to implement this using a tool that only works on iOS. If it was something that was impossible on iOS, like NFC card activations, then I agree with your point.

2 Likes

This one really annoys me. Iā€™ve had to write a script on my computer to use the API so I can set notes on incoming payments. Itā€™s a hassle though. @simonb, do you know if thereā€™s a reason that setti g notes on incoming payments was removed from iOS?

3 Likes

Did it used to be there?

Yes, sadly it did and was removed. :disappointed:

2 Likes

Iā€™d forgotten about this thread, but I just found out iOS has an option to turn location based fraud detection on and off.

Thatā€™s another thing which is not parity.

5 Likes