Hello, it's been a while since I posted on Steem. I will be talking about what I think about the eSteem mobile App - the benefits of using the app, it's drawbacks and much more.
Repository
https://github.com/esteemapp/esteem
What is eSteem?
If you have been following me for more than a year, you must have see me define it a couple of times in related (bugs and promotional) articles. When I tell people about Steemit, they often ask a question like "does it have an app?" It is at this point I introduce them to eSteem, which is more like an unofficial app.
Simply put, it is a mobile app (android, desktop & iOS) that is used to access the Steem blockchain. It works just like other Steem frontends - steemit.com, busy.org and steemiz.io.
When I joined Steemit October 2017, eSteem app was the most popular Steem smartphone app and the most rewarding. I often contribute to the app through Utopian.io.
There was an incident that made me love the app more. Just like most open sourced projects, contributions are welcomed, but whether contributions are implemented is debatable. I composed series of bugs/suggestions posts about eSteem App on Utopian, so that the app could get better. Little did I know that the lead developer @good-karma, was keenly following up these suggestions until he commented on some of them. Here is one of the posts he commented on.
That's one reason why I like eSteem app, the developers are open to suggestions. You are certain that your voice is going to be heard.
Also, in a time when it was so difficult to get mobile notications from the Steem blockchain, eSteem app was there. Till date, I still use eSteem app for getting notifications. The most interesting notification I get is that of unfollow, even Twitter doesn't send such notifications. When I leave a comment on a Steemian post, the app notifies me of upvotes and replies.
Another reason why many love eSteem App is the upvotes, who doesn't want to be rewarded for his contents haha. The app has a curation trail which upvotes some posts and comments made with the app. I have been trying to understand how the app selects them, it looks random to me. I remember the first time it upvoted a comment I made, I was surprised. I initially thought the upvotes was available for posts only.
When you have less than 500SP (SP - Steem Power), the vote slider doesn't appear on Steemit. A user like me who belonged to many communities when I joined Steemit went around upvoting over 20 posts a day, thinking upvotes is similar to the like function on Facebook and Twitter. Until my voting power drained out did I realise I was doing more harm than good to my account.
Esteem App helped solve that problem. All I did was set the inbuilt voting slider to 50% voting weight, with that I could still vote a number of posts with my 2 cents.
I have said much about what I like about eSteem, hope you have been following. There are also features I'll like to be seen in the app.
Esteem App's Exchange is another feature I like on the app. It is more detailed than Steemit's Market. It shows transactions (buy and sell orders) that were recently completed on Steemit's market. What I don't like about the Exchange is that transactions cannot be carried out there. So I have to combine the use of both. That is one aspect that needs improvement. Why have an exchange you can't exchange on?
Currently, the app supports both Steemit and Golos (fork of Steem). Within the last few months, there have been other forks of Steem - whaleshares.io, weku.io, smoke.io. I would love to see eSteem app support some of these other forks, not saying it must support all of them though. If that is done, when I'm asked what eSteem app does, I can say it is used to access Steem blockchain and it's forks. Simple and straightforward.
My main challenge is that they cleared all my drafts some weeks back, only leaving the most recent one. It was really disheartening. The App's search function needs improvement, at times it is really buggy and slow.
The notification feature which is a plus could also be disturbing at times. Receiving repetitive notifications of an upvote, reply and follow, up to 3 times a day can be really annoying. It makes me seem like a new transaction on the blockchain.
Another challenge is navigation. Navigating around a post doesn't run as smooth as expected. When I click on the profile of a person that commented on my post, it's tad difficult to return to the previous page. I have to exit and open the app again. It's also not possible to view the profiles of people that upvoted a post.
Generally, the app's perfomance is better now with lesser amount of bugs compared to before. I'm also anticipating the v2.0 with improved UI/UX, which would be released soon. If you are amongst those that want a smartphone app to access the Steem blockchain, eSteem App is for you. :)
Official links
• eSteem
• eSteem's Telegram
• eSteem's Discord Server
• Github Repositories