

Hipmunk comes to Android with a surprisingly slick app - wallflower
http://gigaom.com/2011/09/29/hipmunk-android-app

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Kylekramer
I don't see why it is surprising. Credit should go to the Hipmunk team, but it
isn't like it isn't impossible or even difficult relative to other platforms
to make a good looking app on Android. You can argue about how the tools are
worse, user expectations are lower, developer community is less design focused
or their taste is worse, but I am not surprised a quality team made a quality
app.

Android is an important platform, and I am only surprised (and upset) if you
make a shit app. If a company can't get it together to make a good Android
app, maybe they just aren't a good company.

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sshumaker
I disagree - android apps are more difficult to polish then iPhone apps, for a
variety of reasons.

* Bad defaults. (For example, on Android your app will look like crap if you have any gradients, unless you make sure to change the window format to PixelFormat.RGBA_8888 at startup). * Core UI components are ugly and behave poorly * Sluggish performance due to lack of hardware accelerated GUI (especially visible during animations, scrolling, etc) * Extra work to support a variety of screen sizes and input methods (trackball, etc) * Using custom-drawn components on Android that need animation (e.g. SurfaceView) results in inescapable flickering and compositing glitches - and you certainly can't use them properly with transitions. Popular iPhone apps tend to have a lot of UI candy, so this makes it harder to compete.

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jarin
Having developed for both Android and iOS, I totally agree.

It will definitely be big news when a major Android app is noticeably better
than its iOS counterpart.

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vaksel
I don't see why they are surprised...Hipmunk's main appeal to users is the
slick UI...without it, they might as well use Orbitz

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f7u12
The app looks really nice. Only feedback is some labels are some airline
labels are missing on the search results (G2, Gingerbread).

My feedback is more specific to Hipmunk in general. I want to use and love it
but the prices have been off each time I try. For instance on jetblue.com
right now I can get a ticket for tomorrow JFK -> AUS at 9:30AM for $423 but on
Hipmunk it's $797. I'm guessing you might be pulling the price by flight time
and not flight number. There is another flight leaving at 9:30 which is $797.

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spez
That was probably a pricing update. It's one of the really annoying things
that plagues everyone in this space. I see the fare on us for $434 now (which
is $423 after taxes).

<http://www.hipmunk.com/#!JFK.AUS,Sep30>

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f7u12
Ah, that is quite a plague. Thanks for the info.

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Nemisis7654
If you want to give quick feedback, the dev posted on the Android subreddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/kva3g/hipmunk_for_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/kva3g/hipmunk_for_android_just_released_you_like/)

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Guzba
I'm actually keeping an eye on this post as well so feel free to post feedback
here.

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ryanhuff
Quick feedback. I find the return date selection to be non-intuitive. There is
no clear indicator (on my screen) how to specify the return date. Tapping the
screen and did the trick, but there was no indicator that said tapping the
calendar again would choose the return date.

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Guzba
I completely agree now that you mention it. One of those things where you take
it for granted but it isn't clear by default to everyone. On our website we
have a highlight that indicates what your next click will do, and I think
something to this effect will help on Android as well.

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Tyr42
When it said Hipmunk, I thought it was talking about the Haskell bindings
(<http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Hipmunk>) to the chipmonk physics
library. I got all exited thinking that someone had made a great haskell app
for android.

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jamii
A lot of the new ticket vendors on Hipmunk only accept US cards. I would love
to see an option to filter them out, it makes the slick Hipmunk UI totally
pointless if I have to go through by hand and check which vendors are
available for each flight.

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robbles
Although I do think it's a nicely done app, I have to question its utility.

Not Hipmunk itself, just the mobile part. Is there really a large market for
looking up flights on-the-go? I mean, if you're spending a couple
hundred/thousand dollars on traveling somewhere, surely you'd think about it
for long enough to break out a laptop before purchasing, right?

Or is there some other use to this that I'm not considering?

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yesimahuman
Congratulations on a successful launch. The app is a great addition to the
awesomeness of Hipmunk.

