Some Q&A About Our Android App
We answer some questions around our new Android App
Why only an Android App?At the moment, we only have an app for Android smartphones. We are currently developing one for Apple smartphones, it's just taking a little longer than expected. We will release an app for Apple smartphones in the not-too-distant future.
As a side note, if any of you have ever tried to have an app published on the Apple Store, you'll know what I'm talking about....
Is there any difference between the App on my smartphone and Scouts.Digital on my PC?
There is NO difference between Scouts.Digital on your PC and Scouts.Digital on the App.
You can do everything on the App that you can do on Scouts.Digital on your PC.
What Will I need to get the App?
You will need the following:
An Android smartphone that is younger than 4 years old (IE It must be running Android KitKat (4.1) or higher)
A valid logon for Scouts.Digital
Access to some data on your mobile phone (Mobile Data or WiFi)
If you have all of the above, you will be able to use the Scouts.Digital app.
How much bandwidth will the Scouts.Digital app consume?
Scouts.Digital has been designed to be seriously lightweight. This is also used in the smartphone app.
On average, over 300 000 pageviews, Scouts.Digital generates no more than 5GB in bandwidth
This equates to just over 17KB a page. We also use some advanced caching mechanisms and compression on-the-fly to further increase download speeds and decrease data usage
This means that, if you see 50 pages (IE you do 50 things on Scouts.Digital), you will, probably, generate no more than 1MB in data usage.
Having said that, some pages are quite data intensive. Capturing attendance is really lightweight, while creating a Program quite data heavy. Your data usage on the app will depend on how you use the app.
Are you looking at a Online -> Offline App for Scouts.Digital That Can Be used Without Mobile Data?
We, most definitely, are. However, this will take a little bit more than a little time.
Our current view is that:
We should have an online->offline app in testing in about 6 months time (We have some massive data consistency hurdles to get around in an Online -> Offline model)
Our online->offline app will have greatly reduced functionality, but manage the 5 basic things that Group Adult Leaders do (Programs, Events, Attendance, Advancements & Badges)