Some observations on the iOS app

Apps & Clients
1

Having received my SmartThings hardware yesterday, here are some initial observations about the iPhone app:

  1. It keeps prompting me about an update for my hub, but there isn’t
    one. When I first added my hub, during the hub setup the app
    informed me there was an update available and offered to update then
    or allow me to ignore and continue. I took the opportunity to install the
    update; it took several minutes to do so and completed successfully.
    All good.

    However, the app still thinks there is an update available. Whenever I
    restart the app it prompts me with "An updated version of your Hub is
    available…". If I choose “Update” it goes away to check and then says
    "Your Hub is up to date!". The next time I restart the app, the same thing
    happens.

  2. Grey text on white backgrounds. Uggh - it’s tolerable in the
    dashboard, but when I start configuring SmartApps it’s a real
    problem. Under bright lighting it’s a struggle to read large blocks
    of text. In the dark, relying only on the screen backlighting, it is
    impossible. When it comes to parameters, where the default values
    are rendered in an even lighter shade of grey the problem is
    multiplied further. Could you please significantly increase the
    contrast for text elements. Black would be best - consider using
    some other means of differentiating sample text rather than making it
    lighter, e.g. italics.

2 Likes
2

Yes please, can we get off the “grey text” design kick already!? Even Apple (who I think inspired this design trend) has begun to back off of it.

3

I’ll add to this. TURN OFF THE GRAY TEXT on the white background.

When you have to copy text from the screen into another app in order to be able to easily read stuff – fix the contrast.

Stupid design element…