Updates to the Android App

As others have noted before, the android app needs maintenance. I’m using a samsung tablet and I see more than a few issues.

  1. As soon as the app starts, the layout takes some time to correct itself. The row height is initially small enough that some text is cut off. This is corrected after a few seconds.
  2. The title of the paper appears in white text on a already light background. This seems to be an easy fix but I am terribly disappointed that this has not been taken care of.
  3. When I switch back to Paperpile from another app, it starts from the main screen and not from the paper that I was currently reading. This is terribly frustrating because I also make notes on my tablet while reading.
  4. The general usage of the app exposes a lot of hiccups. Highlights take some time to appear, sync takes a while, scrolling is jittery on the web app, the list isn’t short. The app can be a lot snappier than it is right now, and I’m sure many users will appreciate it.

Other posts suggest that Paperpile is running short on resources and is currently prioritizing other features which is understandable but completely abandoning the app is not acceptable at all. We’re all paid customers here. There’s no point in developing new features if you can’t maintain the existing ones.

We should be able to address 2 and 3 in an upcoming update.

I want to apologize for this experience. We have by no means “abandoned” the Android app. But you are right and we run a bit short on resources at the moment and can’t focus on Android as much as we would need to.

In particular the diversity of devices is challenging. Also the third party library we use for annotations has issues. Although it’s the best product out there, the company we licensed it from always is a few steps behind for Android than for iOS. I’m optimistic that some future updates will also fix the issues in Paperpile.

If (4) “could be snappier” refers also to the web app, I’ll have good news. There will be some major announcements soon. Our new webapp will handle infinite long lists with 60fps scrolling performance.

Thank you very much for your response. As much as I would like to believe that the Android app hasn’t been “abandoned”, I see that the last update was in October 2021. That being said, there are issues (including the ones I’ve mentioned) that have been going on since before the last update. Almost a year later, they still remain unresolved (see Android annotations disappear on Samsung tablet, Transparent Paper Title in Android Tablet Version). Annotations might be tricky to solve, I agree, but changing the title styles seems to be a trivial fix that should not take months.

I don’t intend to undermine the efforts that the team has put in to make a product that I would love to use everyday, but my point remains that there needs to be constant effort in making sure that things run smoothly. I really hope that this gets taken care of.