Our latest update for Fulcrum on Android introduces design updates and improvements aligned with Google’s Material Design specifications. These changes affect layouts, look and feel, and interactions to ensure a more modern, consistent user experience. In version 2.13, you’ll notice the app list now appears as a drawer sliding out from the left. Additionally, the form user interface has been redesigned to conform to Material Design standards, improving overall visual consistency.
Google introduced its Material Design language last year, and many popular apps—like Gmail, Google Drive, and Calendar—now reflect it. Updating Fulcrum to meet these standards enhances usability by creating consistent interaction and layout patterns. These similarities make the app easier to learn for new Fulcrum users familiar with UX patterns from other Android applications.
This update also includes significant performance enhancements to the synchronizer for handling larger quantities of data efficiently. Performance tests demonstrate major improvements in syncing large datasets to the Fulcrum Android app for offline use. For example, we compared the previous version (2.12.3) with the latest update (2.13.0) to measure these performance gains. These tests revealed substantial reductions in sync times, enabling faster data access for users working offline.
Our two separate test scenarios included one test with a large number of apps and records, and a second test with fewer apps, but more records in each:
- Test 1 – 57 apps, 8,994 records
- Test 2 – 4 apps, 15,225 records
The reduction in synchronizing time is a huge gain, and makes it much faster to dispatch large datasets to your field devices, even over cellular networks.
If you’re an Android user and haven’t yet installed the latest update, head to the Google Play store to grab the update.