Android Parity Update

Hello Fitbod Community,

You all have had a lot of questions about our Android experience and we’d like to give you an update on where we stand with matching the same features that appear on our iOS app.

Taking a look back, we shipped our Android beta experience in early 2020 with a core feature set that allowed for workout creation and logging. Since then, we’ve added several features to match our iOS experience. This has included:

• Our core recommendation algorithm that generates your next best workout
• Over 680 exercises
• Circuits and Supersets
• Weekly Workout Goal and Workout Previews
• Cardio exercises and recommendations
• Warm-up sets
• Custom Resistance bands
• Max effort day
• And most recently a brand new Wear OS experience for Android Smart Watches 

We chose to ship our Android experience early so that we could deliver the value of Fitbod to the Android community and work with you to improve the product. You all have provided absolutely invaluable feedback that has been a huge asset to helping us design and build the next and better version of Fitbod.

As time went on, unexpected changes and opportunities came up. These things are natural and expected in any product development process. 

Of course, we have also been actively listening to the Fitbod Android community, and one area that our efforts broke down was in our lack of communication that we hear you, and we understand your frustration about why Android doesn’t match our iOS experience. For that, we apologize and commit to improving our communication with you moving forward.

One of our company values is the philosophy that problems are opportunities to be better. Living up to that value, we are committing to take a step towards better by providing more consistent and transparent communication on where Fitbod for Android is with reaching parity with iOS. In the second half of this post we outline exactly what we’ve done and will be doing moving forward.

Of course we can’t look back without also thanking you all for helping us not just bring Fitbod to Android, but to quickly become one of the top fitness apps in the Google Play store. This success is also a testament to the amazing work you all have done to improve your own health and fitness.

• Since launch, we’ve had over 260K installs.
• Over four thousand 5 star reviews
• Fitbod for Wear OS has been in the top 25 charts since August!
• One of the most spectacular achievements has been the progress you all have made in your journeys by logging over 800K unique workouts on Android alone so far this year. Truly amazing work Fitbod community!

So, now to answer the question you all have been asking, why haven’t we reached parity with iOS yet?

There are 3 primary reasons:

1. Our small team has been focused on rebuilding a more stable and robust infrastructure
   This focus has meant reallocating resources and in turn delaying Android parity with iOS. However, this is setting up a significantly more reliable and scalable infrastructure that our products will use to deliver a superior experience and future exciting features across all platforms.
   
   This is also going to mean your data will now be synced and available across all your devices, no more divide between iOS and Android!
   
   
2. We had unexpected changes to our Android team
   

   This left us with a very small team for the last 6 months and they have been doing a phenomenal job owning our Android development and continuously making progress to reaching parity with iOS. Of course, the next question you’re likely asking is ‘Why haven’t you hired anyone?’ we expand on this below.

3. We shipped our first wearable experience for Android in partnership with Google

   Watch and wearables are key parts of our product strategy – Fitbod should be where people access their health and fitness, and this access is increasing on wearables.
   
   Having a wearable experience for Android users was always on the roadmap to parity with our iOS experience. Many of our iOS users rely on the Apple Watch app for a more seamless logging experience without handling the phone. 
   
   Admittedly though, we didn’t intend to tackle this challenge before many of the features you all have been waiting for. Making the decision to pursue this project was a tough one.
   
   On one hand, we know how important reaching parity is. On the other, the creator of the platform we’re building on offered us the guidance and time to help us pursue a challenging and core piece of our experience.
   
   The partnership with Google allowed us to leverage resources we would have otherwise never had available to us. We chose to move forward with developing the watch experience as that partnership was a key part to the successful launch.