There's a certain stage of your life where owning a car is cool, but that feeling eventually wears off. Then it's not having a car that's impressive, it's what you can do with it. Viber's SmartStart app lets anyone who equips their vehicle with the appropriate hardware start, lock, and track their ride using their Android device.

But there's a problem—the existing app is hideous and over five years out of date. It'll work just fine, sure, but you won't want to show it to anyone.

Fortunately a big redesign is on its way as part of version 4.0. You're welcome to go download the APK manually and try things out right away. Here's the experience you have waiting on you once you do.

The update is late considering Viper announced a release time frame of early 2015. The promised Android Wear features aren't ready yet either. The available functionality remains largely the same as before, but at least things are pretty now. That's good, because considering Viper's existing record on the track, users might be stuck with this look for quite a while.

Comments

clay

um, "engine stoped"

Brad

Beta ¯_(ツ)_/¯

exadeci

There might be an issue on your car:

stope
verb

past tense: stoped; past participle: stoped
(in mining) excavate a series of steps or layers in (the ground or rock).
GEOLOGY
the process by which country rock is broken up and removed by the upward movement of magma.
noun: stoping

Kevin

Do we uninstall the old one? Or can we install this on top?

verboze

no you can just install over, it'll update the existing version

Marcellus1

I'm more interested in something without a subscription. Anyone try the OBD Canex or have other subscription-less suggestions?

Joel

There's a Bluetooth option that doesn't require a subscription, but the trade off is that your range is Bluetooth, so like 50 feet at best.

Marcellus1

I'm okay with that. I don't need to be controlling my car from out of town or anything.

I may come off as a bitch for saying this, but the ugly app was a huge part of the reason I never bothered to install that stuff on my car. Now that the app isn't hideous, I wouldn't mind setting it all up.

verboze

Meh. It is only marginally better. UI notwithstanding, the app still has the same functional issues:
1. there is no indicator of current status without refresh. It's frustrating to have to navigate to the details page and refresh in order to get status. I'd even take a longer app load time if it meant updating status on startup (at the very least they should surface the refresh button to the front page...)
2. The "swipe up to start" is theoretically an improvement over the previous push to start (too many accidental touches), but the implementation is actually worse. There's no indication when swiping, and there's a delay on the overlay that indicates start command has been sent
3. Once the start command actually fires (after 10 million attempts at swiping), the home screen does not provide any indication that the engine is running. At least previously, there was a notification; at the moment, they've not yet implemented push notifications :/
4. Because of this, one cannot easily tell if the car is on or off. Again, you must navigate to the car details page, refresh status, then go back, and take desired action :/
5. Oh, and the activity page does not currently update. yay :
6. What is the benefit of keeping the screen on indefinitely when the app is running?
7. Navigation between screens of the app is confusing. In some places the back button work and takes the user back to the previous activity; in others, one must use the slide-out menu to navigate back

They need to put more thought into UX design. It is apparent, even with this update, they are still using UX elements that work well in iOS, but not on android (for example, why not implement a long press to start? The user must then commit to the action, avoiding accidental starts, and there should be a clear indicator like the yellow ring displaying the delay until the start intent is actioned). This is not a beta quality app too many functional gaps imho. This is still very much alpha.

I'm really considering switching to drone mobile, at least they appear to have their app up to par with android design guidelines; it's intuitive and well-designed.