Silencio rolled out v2 of their app yesterday. This morning I used it quite a bit on my morning walk. They totally revamped the UI for the app and as someone used to the old app, it took a bit of experimenting to figure out how to navigate the new system. I've compiled a few thoughts about the new app:
The Good
The live map display while recording works great and is very helpful for capturing hexes that I missed in previous sessions. This is the best enhancement in the new app IMO.The display of the timer is now presented in high contrast black letters with a larger font and its much easier for me to read without a pair of reading glasses. This might not matter to you younger folks whose near/reading vision is still sharp, but in my case, this is a huge quality of life issue.They expanded the number of "quests" (now called achievements) that you can earn. It's a small thing, but it's nice to be rewarded for achieving occasional milestones.They got rid of that sometimes frustrating "pick one of three multiplier rewards" system when finishing/claiming a recording session. They now have a "Vegas one armed bandit slot machine style scrolling wheel". I see that the wheel includes a 100x multiplier in it (which I missed by one tick once).
The Bad
On my phone, the display of the overlay with the decibel levels clips into the "your current position" marker on the map so I can't see hexes behind me at all or to the sides (partially clipped). They need to allow us to minimize that overlay to make the live map easier to use when you are going for unclaimed hexes in an area you've previously traversed.If you want to apply a bonus multiplier to your earned coins from a recording session now, you have to watch an ad first. I suppose this could be a good thing in the long run for the health of the Silencio project, but it is annoying for someone that is trying to maximize their recording time and phone battery life. I chose to watch ads several times and so far have seen a couple very short (~5s) ads for Kraken and a few longer ads (~15s) for "CTsomethingorother".
The Ugly
I don't know if it's the app or my phone, but I'm unable to record a venue check-in presently. When I select that option and then select the nearby venue, the app shows a screen with recording info (decibels, record time) and then freezes. It doesn't record anything. If I click to abort the session, I get a confirmation pop-up that has two options to cancel the abort, but no option to confirm the abort. I have to close the app completely and restart to reset to the main screen.I thought this app was running more stable than the previous app. I successfully recorded several sessions >20min each. But on my way home, I had a recording that was running on 17min. When I checked it again a minute or so later, the app had crashed and I lost the recording. I had to restart the app several times as it would not start a new recording session - just gave me "something went wrong" error messages over and over - until it finally started working again.