MetrO for Android: preview

It has been a long time since I first wrote about a version of MetrO for Android. I did not think then that it would take more than one year to achieve something and I apologize to all of you who expressed their frustration.

Today, I am very happy to announce that you will finally have something to install on your Android phones. It is really not much (hence the "preview" in the title and its "0.1" release number) but it will at least let you find your way in the more than 400 transportation networks we currently cover.

Installation

MetrO for Android should work on any phone with a system version equal or greater than 1.6 ("Donut"). It is optimized only for "regular" screen sizes (320x480 pixels) at the moment but should not have any problem with other sizes and densities (otherwise, please let me know).

To install the app and since it is not yet ready for the Android Market, you will first have to enable "third-party app installation" in the "developper" settings on your phone (for instructions, see here, for example). You can then download the application package here and install it manually on your device.

How to use

If you have used MetrO on other platforms, you should not be surprised: being no design wizard, I have just reproduced the same interface you already know.

On the first launch, you will see the city list panel and you will be invited to connect to the Internet to load the current list.

After you have installed some cities, they will appear in the list with a green robot icon, whereas the other available cities ares shown with a lightning icon (they will require an Internet connection to be loaded). Whenever possible, the files will be saved on the memory card.

The buttons let you switch between the complete list and a list of the cities present on your device, while the last one ("Update all") checks for updates on all the files you have already installed.

Besides other options available on a long press (discover them for yourself), you can download (if necessary) and open a city by simply pressing on its name.

The main screen, where you can find a route in the selected city, will now appear. Note that the last city you have opened will be automatically loaded when you restart the app.

You should now see the familiar text fields where you can enter your starting point and your destination. After you type 3 letters, a list of suggested matches will be shown, where you can select the stop or POI you are looking for.

Press the "Go" button and your route(s) will appear:

Among the features that are available in this release, the day and time button lets you change ... the day and time of your planned trip. There is also a hidden trick: shaking your phone will reset the contents of the screen (it may need some tweaking, though).

Now, if you open the menu, you will notice that there is still some work to do. The only option that is presently active is the one ("Cities") that gets you back to the list of cities, where you will be able to load a new one or check for updates.

What remains to do

The app is available only in English right now. I will add other languages when it is sufficiently advanced.

Obviously, the options that are grayed out in the current version will become active in time: access to the lists of stops, transportation routes, POIs, detailed information, a few preferences...

In addition, I will have to implement the geolocation and search by street address features, that will let you find a route from/to any place without knowing the stop names (in more than 50 cities, now).

Please comment

If you try out this preview release, do not hesitate to post your comments and/or issues or, better, to send me a mail.

I hope to come back soon with updates and new features!

Update (08/07/2011): a new release has been published.