Page 1 of 1

Windows Phone/RT/8 energy, app quality & attention

Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 8:42 pm
by dkmortensen
Hello LDS Tech people,

I've been using & following the Windows Phone scene for close to 2 years now. I have also owned a Surface RT for about 7 months, and now use a WP 8.1 Pro tablet daily.

I have been grateful for the LDS apps that do exist for WP. However, I think I would represent the feelings of many LDS WP users in saying that we feel that WP is a very low priority for the Church's mobile development, when compared with Android & iOS. Of course this is understandable considering the market share of the other 2 platforms, as well as the jump-start they got on the mobile market, compared to WP.

Still I would like to see more progress in the WP/W8 platform. WP is doing extremely well in growth & market share considering the uphill climb it has to make. Here's data from the past quarter from 2 firms declaring WP the winner of the quarter:
http://www.wpcentral.com/idc-windows-ph ... ed-q3-2013
http://www.wpcentral.com/now-gartner-pi ... st-quarter
http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone- ... ing-system

I am not going to change to another platform. I have used smartphones since 2005 (Palm Treo). I like the WP/RT/W8 platform and where it is going, and the uniqueness it brings. In my opinion it is the best platform. It just needs more adoption & energy all around.

I would really like to see the WP/RT/W8 apps be on level ground with the 2 other major platforms. I would be happy to contribute to this. I don't prefer to have a sub-par feature-set in the apps because I chose to use what I think is the best platform even though it will take a long while for a lot more people to catch on.

How can I and other interested members help progress these apps? I realize the Church needs to be prudent with its resources and I understand that it makes sense to focus efforts on the largest population of people. But couldn't members somehow take it upon ourselves to work with some liaison at the church to help take these apps from "good" to fantastic?

Also, we are still waiting for the October General Conference talks to be added to Gospel Library. That is one thing that I don't understand. To me it feels like there are folks who just don't care that 1 out of 30 people don't get the updated content. Relatively speaking, this would mean about 1 out of 30 members (using smartphones) of my ward/stake/region/church. For a 15M member church, assuming/guessing 30% activity, that's 4.5M active members. Guessing that maybe 30% own smartphones, that would be 1.35M members. Of those, about 1.3M (iOS & Android) get up-to-date content. That would leave around 47,000 of us Windows Phone users who don't.

But I'd like to. How can we help?

Sincerely,
-
Doug

Re: Windows Phone/RT/8 energy, app quality & attention

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:36 am
by jkentner
Doug, I agree with you 100%.

Re: Windows Phone/RT/8 energy, app quality & attention

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 11:07 am
by jkentner
Read this post if you haven't seen it. Looks like the WP8 Gospel Library was "archived", potentially could still be in there, or maybe moved back to active. It's in some black hole... https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 88#p117488 (read post by jaycenornin)

Re: Windows Phone/RT/8 energy, app quality & attention

Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 1:11 pm
by shanegillett
I would also be interested in helping out. I just found this site. My whole family has windows phones and it's crazy that the magazines aren't updating anymore. Not sure where to start.

Re: Windows Phone/RT/8 energy, app quality & attention

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:07 pm
by JoelBennett
Chalk another one up who would be willing to help out. I'm currently in the process of developing a Windows Phone 8 app, so perhaps once it is out the door I can use the experience from it to help out with things here.

I'd be curious to get my hands on some of the data to play around with. My understanding on why the Windows Phone apps aren't updated as frequently, is that they were using a different format (see: https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=105&t=18307). If anyone has any info on the format that the iOS/Android apps are using, by all means, please point me at it!

Re: Windows Phone/RT/8 energy, app quality & attention

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 7:37 am
by BowmanDH
For more information on the development and future plans look at the wiki: https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Gospel_Library_for_Windows_8