Wishlist for Android / iPhone app features and improvements

johnb
August 17, 2010, 01:17 AM posted in General Discussion

Hello all,

As many of you know, we've recently launched a new version of the ChinesePod Android app, and are working on a new version of the iPhone app. As an increasing number of ChinesePod users are accessing the service via these apps, we want to make them as useful and friendly as possible.

In that spirit, I'm starting this thread as a collection point for feature and improvement requests and ideas both of the existing Android app and the soon to be revealed iPhone app. While we can't promise to implement everything, we'll do our best to make the most useful app we possibly can.

(please note that if you're experiencing actual bugs (as opposed to design issues), you should post them in the Technical Problems group so that they don't accidentally fall through the cracks)

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jckeith
August 17, 2010, 01:41 AM

The ability to filter lessons would be helpful. At any given time, I only have about 4-5 lessons downloaded, as opposed to over 100 bookmarked. As you might imagine, I have to scroll through pages of lessons to get to the few that I want to listen to at the time.

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johnb

In that case, would you want a separate list that showed only those apps whose media you've already downloaded?

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jckeith

Yes, that would be great.

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matthiask
August 19, 2010, 09:47 AM

wishlist item: add an option to the menu or upper right corner to add the whole vocab/sup vocab to the vocabulary list. clicking each word is quite cumbersome.

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:35 AM

Wishlist item: Make the dialogue file more accessible -> extra button at the top. Give a \"loop\" button, so I can hear the dialogue over and over again and shadow along.

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:37 AM

wishlist item: make the play button in the main application bigger - or at least make it responsive. I often press the button and nothing happens.

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SF_Rachel

I have also experienced this frustration. On my HTC Incredible, I don't know if the problem is the button is too small, or it's simply too close to the edge of the screen. I think it would be greatly improved if the button were moved away from the bottom edge. This would be enough to make it more responsive.

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:38 AM

wishlist item: bundle the lessons (data + audio) and let them download in the background (like aldiko reader, where, once you download a book, still can use the application. )

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jckeith

I like this idea too.

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:39 AM

wishlist item: enlarge the font size of the chinese characters a bit more. Do not enlarge the english text.

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SF_Rachel

Seconded. There is no need to further the size of the English (it already looks bigger than the characters in the drill-down view). But the characters can always benefit from upsizing -- particularly in the drill-down views. There seems to be plenty of real estate on the screen, why not use it?

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:29 AM

REPOST to keep things together:
I'm using the mobile app during commuting time and dish washing. for both it was important that the app is quick, responsive and error prove.

the new app (2.0.2) has lost a lot of this power.

before (in 1.2) I started the app, clicked sync, saw the latest lesson of my personal feed, clicked it and clicked listen. after a while I got my cpodfix.

now I start the app, browse through each lesson feed of the randomly released lessons to find the lesson of the day. (for each I have to sync as well). once I find a new lesson I have to click the lesson, click \"download\" and wait. then I click listen. then the lesson starts downloading.

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:49 AM

wishlist item: Allow to slow down the dialogues without changing the pitch.

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:49 AM

Improve the \"Mark as studied\" concept. Right now it is too easy to accidentally press this. This would be way more useful in the menu Button.

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:50 AM

wishlist item: Could you give a drawing canvas in the character view, so one could simply draw each character?

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candy19891128
August 19, 2010, 03:14 AM

good ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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SF_Rachel
August 19, 2010, 03:16 AM

In the previous version of the Android app, if you were in the expansion section you could

1. First, click on a sentence to see it bigger. You still can. But it's actually not much bigger -- and if you click on the sentence, the translation goes away (fine by me, really -- but it seems odd to me that the translation is shown on the first page, then you click to show less information, not more!). And you can't see pinyin anymore on the front page (again, actually fine by me -- less on the front page, make me work for it, better learning).

2. Once you had clicked on a sentence in the old version, you could click on individual words to get to a third page, showing the definition of the word. Can't do that anymore. I miss it. Instead, you get a translation of the whole sentence -- in a rather large font, which seems odd. I think most people would agree that there's more to be gained with a big font for the characters than for roman letter! Considering that especially when I'm doing a "stretch" lesson a little beyond my normal capabilities, I often find that the expansion includes a lot of vocab that's new for me but not called out in the vocab section. Which is my problem, not cpod's, but I wish the Android app helped me out.

Bottom line, the old version seemed much more sensible about showing less information on the first page of the expansion, then gradually revealing more information, but only if you asked for it. This old approach seemed more in line with how things are handled on the desktop application, where everything is displayed in characters and I have to flyover and/or click to get more info. The approach on the desktop application has been unbelievably helpful in forcing me to learn to read very quickly (so, yay Chinesepod!) and I'm frustrated that the Android app seems to not share the philosophy (boo!).

FWIW, my phone is the HTC Incredible.

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matthiask
August 17, 2010, 07:44 AM

wishlist item: in sentence view. would be nice to have gesture based switching between one sentence and another (swipe left, swipe right)