Use less bandwidth—data-saver mode

[PattaFeuFeu]

Mobile reception and mobile network speeds are getting better and better, but there are still quite a few places, especially in rural areas, where one doesn’t have the reception necessary to get fast response times within the app.

Thus, I’d like to propose a data-saver mode. Ideas on how that might be established include:

• Use only cached images, don’t download new ones—unless user tapped on image if they absolutely want to download the image
• Reduce request data
  • Even higher zoom level necessary to have the app download hosts
  • Only download messages if user swiped to refresh, not automatically
• Map caching? (Not sure if this is possible with either in-app Google Maps or OSM (Add option to choose between Google Maps and OSM/OCM #264)

[PattaFeuFeu]

Regarding map caching: I’ll check this StackOverflow post and the linked answers.

[dericke]

Would the planned inclusion of OSM use raster tiles or vector tiles? The latter would reduce bandwidth considerably and could be cached on-device.

[PattaFeuFeu]

@dericke Excellent question!

OSMdroid, which we are planning on using for the OSM integration, currently doesn’t support vector maps, unfortunately.

osmdroid/osmdroid#246

[dericke]

Ah, that's too bad. If you were starting from scratch, I would suggest that you use the open-source Mapbox Android library instead of OSMdroid, but I'm guessing there has already been work done towards OSMdroid integration. If that's the case, should I make a new issue to support vector tiles further into the future?

[PattaFeuFeu]

Vector tiles using OSMdroid or using Mapbox?

I don’t know how much time @saemy put into supporting OSMdroid; but we could have a look at vector tiles at some point. Supporting the maps downloaded from http://www.openandromaps.org/ would be another great addition.

[sgelb]

I don't know of online vector map sources that are suitable for this project. Mapbox is really great and I use them in another project of mine, but the Android SDK has a limit on free map downloads, see their pricing.

Offline maps would be really great, I opened another issue for this: #296.

[dericke]

There's also maptiler.com as a potential vector tile source. I've never used them before, however.

Another non-profit organization that I volunteer for has been trialling Mapbox, and they may have special plans for registered non-profits. Someone would have to contact their sales team to learn more: https://www.mapbox.com/help/account-faq/#does-mapbox-offer-a-non-profit-or-educational-discount