LeoMobile will change the way users interact with LeoFinance and Hive, taking blogging to a whole new level
LeoMobile has been out for a while now, but it wasn't until yesterday that I could finally try it for the first time. For some reason, I couldn't get past the login screen, but the last update on the app fixed that, so I've been exploring the app thoroughly for the last couple of days.
I'm not a heavy user of mobile devices, and the bulk of my activity is done through leofinance.io, but I understand the importance of providing a good user experience for users on mobile devices.
In 2015, Twitter reported that roughly 80% of its MAU (monthly active users) accessed the platform on mobile devices.
If I had to guess, I would say that this percentage has increased since then, but either way, this data clearly shows that mass adoption of LeoFinance (and any other social media, for that matter) requires a good mobile alternative.
From what I've seen so far, I have every reason to believe that LeoMobile is on track to become the application that we need.
Let's take a look at the main features of the app.
Exploring LeoFinance Mobile
I must say right off the bat that the look and feel of the app are fantastic! It has dark mode, which is a must nowadays, and you can even choose among a few different themes, although I think the default LeoFinance theme is, by far, the best. The product designers really nailed that one!
The home screen is everything you would hope for, and it's possible to switch between the curated section and your personal feed with the click (or touch) of a button. You can also choose from two display modes: one where the post thumbnail is bigger and centred on the screen and another where it is smaller and aligned to the right, next to the post's title.
You can scroll through posts on the home screen exactly as you would on most social media, and scrolling feels a lot smoother than on the browser, in my opinion. It seems to be infinite, and I could scroll back many posts without any of the issues I sometimes have while using the browser version.
I was really impressed by how fast and smooth the transitions between menus, different sections of the app and also from a post back to the home screen. Again, very different from the browser version!
Upvoting is also a cool experience, and I liked the way it was implemented. Rather than choosing the voting power on a tiny slider, the app takes you to a whole new screen, entirely dedicated to setting the weight of your vote, and you can even change the slider's scale to make it even easier to define the number you want. The transition to the voting screen and back to the post is just as smooth as everything else on the app. Congratulations to whoever came up with that because it is a great feature.
.jpeg)
Reading posts is very straightforward, and I didn't find any issues with that, and the same goes for commenting. Writing a full post is not as easy, but that may be more related to my personal preference than the app itself. I still prefer doing so on a physical keyboard and a bigger screen, but it is perfectly possible to write and publish posts on LeoMobile and the workflow is almost identical.
There is also a search function, but I'm not sure if it's very accurate yet. Maybe I just don't know the best way to use it.
Finally, one of the things I like the most: notifications! The app is enabled for push notifications, something I find very useful to help me keep track of comments on my posts and make sure I'm engaging with every one of my readers.
.jpeg)
Potential improvements
I believe the app is ready to use and delivers a very satisfactory user experience as it is, but there are a few things I would like to see improved in the future.
I would like my voting power to be displayed on the home screen as it would be easier to keep track of it.
As mentioned above, I'm not sure if the search bar is working correctly or if maybe I didn't use it correctly. Either way, it would be great to have more accurate results or perhaps hints on how to create better search requests.
Lastly, the screen to choose voting percentage is the same for upvotes and downvotes. It doesn't matter as much for me because I rarely downvote, but it would be helpful to differentiate them somehow to avoid unintended downvoting.
Final thoughts
LeoMobile is an excellent app with a lot of potentials to shape the future of blogging on Hive and I'm sure it will help to onboard and retain LeoFinance users.
The user experience is one of the best I've seen on Hive, and I'll definitely be integrating LeoMobile into my daily routine.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
