Improving the Oura ring iPhone app

There was an update to the Oura ring firmware (1.19.1) and iPhone app (2.7.0 & 3966) last week. I noticed a real improvement today when I was looking at trend data. It is a big change to me, but it was not mentioned in the update description.

Before this update, when I tapped on average HRV I would get a trend plot of average HRV; but when I tapped on max HRV, I would get the same trend plot of average HRV, not max HRV. Now I get max HRV. The trend plot of max HRV does not have a text description, but the one for average HRV is still there. The same problem has been corrected with average resting HR and minimum resting HR. Now I can get a trend plot of average resting HR, not just minimum resting HR.

As I was searching the web to see whether anyone else had commented on this change, I noticed that the Android Oura app is way behind in features, really nothing like the iOS app. The ring data is far more useful to iPhone users. I can’t figure out why that should be true. Android has a bigger market share (75% to 80%) as a whole. Even if that were not true among Oura users, there is a good business case for providing Android users with the same features that iOS users have.

To my surprise, a quick search of the web makes it clear that converting an app from iOS to Android is a major undertaking! There are good summaries of the process at this site, here, and here, as well as in this tutorial. It seems pretty clear that you need to have programmers for each of the platforms or super programmers with true expertise in both.

This is the third example of the company being understaffed or not appropriately staffed. The first was the awful experience that users had (have?) with delays in shipping rings. The second would be that they do not respond to user reviews in the Apple App Store. Users use the reviews to make purchase decisions. When developers don’t respond, especially to negative reviews, it makes them seem inept. 

Oura started with a Kickstarter page that went viral, but they have plenty of experience and capital at this point, so hopefully they will get better and better!