Editing Meeting Minutes/2020-04-16 Hackweek - mobile discussion

{{meeting-minutes}}
We didn't take structured notes, but here's a slack thread conversation (source: https://trustroots.slack.com/archives/C08SENA9Z/p1586968132213200?thread_ts=1586967195.211900&cid=C08SENA9Z) (edited for relevance/brevity)

'''Mikael'''

the biggest priority for the current mobile app was to;
- folks have something to install to have TR icon on their phones
- have push notifications working on their phones (I cannot stress how important this is)

'''theo'''

understood, and the existing mobile app fulfills these 2 points?

'''Mikael '''

yep, and not much anything else :grin:

'''Mikael '''

well, it’s not on ios actually, so it half accomplishes them :wink:

'''Mikael '''

I’ve recently done little bit of work to make things work for apple too, we should re-send it for review to their store finally.

'''theo '''

@rumwerfer we chatted about two main approaches:

1. Adapt the existing wrapped mobile website and start to see if we can introduce some native elements to it, either features or whole views where it makes sense

2.Start with a fresh React Native / Expo project and implement a very small, core subset of features that would work really well on mobile and have really good offline support and take advantage of native APIs where possible (geolocation and messaging for instance).

From a developer perspective I felt number 2 was easier to approach and easier to get people on board with however there are some benefits to the first as well, namely keeping all the existing features and not duplicating UI work.
There is also the idea that regardless which option we pick we should release the existing app into the iOS app store. Would be cool to hear your thoughts?
:+1:
1

'''rumwerfer '''

Thanks. I don't really have an opinion or knowledge on this topic. Number 2 also sounds more beneficial to the community, but I'll leave that to others. Is the existing app ready-to-go to iOS app store? Mind if I post your summary on the wiki? (edited) 

'''theo '''

yeah for sure you can post it, I'd be interested to hear what others have to say. I had some trouble running the existing app in the iOS simulator last night I can try again, as far as I understand it was at some point submitted for review and rejected, I'm guessing due to an older react native version bundling the deprecated WebView API? but I think that shouldn't be an issue anymore with the latest expo.

'''Mikael'''

it was rejected due us having google play store badge visible on ios :grin:
:facepalm3:
1


'''Mikael'''

fixed in https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots/pull/1139 (edited) 

'''Mikael'''

https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots-expo-mobile/issues/10#issuecomment-528238998

'''simison'''

Comment on #10 Bundle an iOS version
Next steps:
☑︎ hide store buttons when wrapping in webview Trustroots/trustroots#1139
☐ re-submit to apple for review (@simison). I have the Apple dev account for Trustroots already.
☐ when accepted, update app store links to point to download page
☐ send email to people who asked to be notified when iOS app is out
<https://github.com/Trustroots/trustroots-expo-mobile|Trustroots/trustroots-expo-mobile>Trustroots/trustroots-expo-mobile | Sep 5th, 2019 | Added by GitHub

'''nick'''

if option 2. was the one to go for, I would wonder what the users would make of having the webview version available, then a future version suddenly has all the features ripped out :confused: ... although I think, as we came to realise on the call, whatever we do there will be some users complaining about the approach, it's hard to achieve this slick and cohesive user experience with this kind of project.

'''theo'''

depending on how many people there are wanting to use it we could have a longer open beta type thing using test flight and google beta program thing, so that there isn't a hard switch to a newer, less feature rich version?

'''Mikael'''

I think we’d anyway have some kind of “open website on browser” type link on the sidebar? so the features would still be discoverable

'''nick'''

@theo I didn't quite get the sequence of things there, did you mean:

* release iOS app as-is in normal release mode as soon as we can
* once ready start publishing the new (approach 2) app in open beta
* after some time, switch over (edited) 

'''theo'''

yeah that was the rough idea, what do you think?

'''nick'''

yes, sounds good to me!