RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
1
It’s interesting the Classic app supports the new API apps also, works just fine here.
So there’s no real reason to retire it, you can keep both apps. The Classic app has more features and highly customizable while the new app has a more standard interface but both groovy and new apps run on both ST apps.
The Classic app cannot current “install” the new API apps, once installed it shows up in the Classic app and can be used. Vice versa the new app cannot install groovy apps but once installed it shows up and works fine in the new app. However I believe that the new app has the ability to install groovy apps but it hasn’t been enabled yet.
Overall the groovy apps appear to be more functional and flexible then the new API.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
2
Well the big reason is that keeping two separate apps really doesn’t make sense. The big reason we have the new app is that it unified 40+ different samsung smart home apps into one thing. The better approach is to provide feedback to make the new app better than the old one as that is where all the developement effort is focused now.
What would have been cool is if the new app started off with what all the classic app can do and improve from there. That is how you retire an old app.
For some of the things that the classic app could do we are moving in different directions. The rationalizations for these changes won’t be fully clear until later on in the year. I agree, that in the ultimate universe we would have had everything done before the app was released, but we live in this one.
@jody.albritton, what is the process or mechanism for users to submit this feedback (and have it get into a channel that provides some visibility to decision makers)?
Unlike many other apps I use, there doesn’t seem to be any in app feedback or suggestion mechanism.
(And the new app is almost unusable right now because it interrupts what i am doing and wants me to assign some set of unknown devices (many labeled only as “thing”) to a “room”, which i don’t want to do, but it has no way to get out of this other than to close the app)
I find it harder to believe the new app is rated that high.
3 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
13
Indeed… There are several pages of 1 to 2 Star Ratings when sorted by “Most Relevant”.
Google Play gives more weight to recent Ratings when calculating overall score, but …?
All I can say is using 2 apps.is a pain & if samsung can not get smartthings in order, before you know it amazon is going to swoop right in. I’m willing to bet someone from amazon is paying attention to.these forms.
@tgauchat@fightingmajor If you look throuigh those reviews and not the ratings you will see a majority are being responded to. There are folks who are looking at those reviews and cataloging similar issues/complaints.
No the new app does not install on all devices. It is unusable on some phones. It wont even install on samsung j3. The old app runs on all devices. Unless they fix the app to run on all phones no removing the old app will kick customers off the service
If the custom DTH has been ported to the new capabilities format it will work in the new app. Custom attriubutes and commands not supported by our capabilities model will not work.
