Snap has finally overhauled its Snapchat photo app. The app has been rebuilt from the ground up since early 2018, to bring the performance of the Android app in line with that of the iOS app.
While at first glance little has changed about Snapchat, quite a few changes have been made on the back to make the photos app faster. In initial tests, the app would start up 20 percent faster and the loading times of Lens and Stories were significantly reduced. In addition, the quality of photos has been improved and many bugs are said to have been eliminated.
Brand new
An interview by Android Authority with some members of Snapchat's development team shows that the company has been working on the update for a while. Initially Snap thought it would get rid of it with some patches for the old app, but it soon became clear that the best way to rebuild the photo app from scratch is to solve all the problems in one go.
Over the years, the Android ecosystem has grown a lot and there are many different Android phones available, for every budget. This also means that the performance of different phones varies enormously, causing one Android smartphone to have significantly more trouble playing Snapchat than the other.
The new version of Snapchat takes this into account more. The app should now work a lot better for any Android phone and future updates can also be implemented more easily and quickly. New patches and features will come along with the iOS version of Snapchat, which wasn't the case before. In fact, Snap Vice President Jacob Andreou suggests that new features may come to Android sooner in the future, before making their way to iOS devices.
Not everything solved
That seems like future music for the time being. Android users still run into problems and not all features are available, including Snapchat Charms. This feature, which allows you to celebrate your friendships in a special way, is currently only available for the iOS app.
Snap told tech website Engadget that Android users will have to wait a little longer before all changes are implemented. Whether they can muster the patience remains to be seen. In the third quarter of 2018, Snapchat already lost two million members, the majority of whom were Android users.
