Fun with Mobile Google+

I was on vacation for the last two weeks, far away from my desktop, so I decided to check how much I can do with smartphone. It was great time to do that because Google released updates of many applications for I/O. I'll start with Google+; prepare for battle of epic proportions.

The Good

First thing that I noticed was how Google+ looks much more polished. Previous version, which introduced picture-heavy post list, looked crammed. Text-loving users were disappointed with small, unreadable chunks of text on top of pictures. New version has clean design, with clear separation of posts, and readable, but still somewhat short textual descriptions. Both portrait and landscape scrolling is smooth and beautiful.

Navigation changed considerably. Horizontal swiping for circle change is replaced by drop-down menu. There is also new menu that pops-up from the left, which roughly resembles left menu on the desktop. Layout is actually similar to desktop version, it is just that all parts are not visible at the same time. While constant changes can be stressful to some users, I actually like seeing it develops in front of my very eyes.

One of the coolest new features are events. Think of it as super-friendly meeting invitations. You can invite your friends to physical or virtual (hangouts!) event. They can confirm that they are coming and even invite more people, if you allow them. When event starts, all pictures taken by all participants are flowing into unified, live stream, which people can watch as slide-show as it happens. Apart from slight confusion is event publicly visible or not, feature works great.

The Bad

That were the good, flashy parts. When you try to use mobile Google+ as your sole client, many nasty details bubble up.

Browsing through complete posts is done using clumsy in-out pattern, with no way to move between messages easily. They could simply implement it with side-wise swiping as it is not used for anything else anyway.

When you re-open post, you are again on the first comment, instead of first unread one. If the list is long, it will take many swipes to reach the new ones.

Hash-tags auto-complete is missing. You will not have a clue did you used preexisting hash-tag or invented something new that no-one will search for.

Minor annoyance is referencing post in comment to other post. Contrary to web interface, I couldn't get URL of the post to insert it into comment.

Reposting of text content is flawed. If original post contains just text and no pictures, repost will show nothing. You must write comment or your friends will wonder why you just posted empty message.

The Ugly

Worst offense is total lack of support for business pages. I tried to post something from my mobile, and that's where battle started.  I was unable to do it with app.  You can post only on your main profile. There is no way to switch. I tried with web UI, but there is no way to convince Chrome to switch from mobile to desktop version. Finally I succeeded with Dolphin HD and stock Android keyboard after many crashes. Those desktop HTML 5 applications are unbelievably bloated and cannot run on mobile with limited resources. It took me couple of hours for a single post. I can't believe that Google completely neglected mobile business users, but that seems to be the case.

Shiny new UI and shiny new features are great. Now when I/O is over, please focus on more down-to-earth features.