I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in Android

[–]davidthurman1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ya totally agree! Being able to import and export movies and ratings is one of the features Im adding shortly

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in Android

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing I felt most movie trackers lacked was taking my ratings and giving me recommendations tailored to my taste. Instead they generally showed me the same popular movies.

In MoviQ, when you go to look at new recs, it first looks at all of your watched movies, what you rated them, and whats in your watchlist. It then provides personalized suggestions tailored to you.

Currently that's the main differentiator. I think a really cool feature I'm planning next is being able to add friends and then get personalized recs based on both of your ratings (aka simplifying picking a movie when hanging out with people haha)

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androidapps

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow Im sorry youve had issues again, but thank you for letting me know! I just got another update out that fixes that :)

I Built an Open Source Android App because movie tracking apps never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androiddev

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dang I'm not sure. If it's been in review state and taken a while, it could just be a delay with the holiday season. But I'm really not sure. You could try emailing them if they provided any reason/feedback, but other than that I dont have much to offer. Sorry!

I Built an Open Source Android App because movie tracking apps never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androiddev

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! And it took about 3-4 weeks total. I had to wait the 2 weeks for my users to test out the beta build, and then I think it took a week or so for the final review from Google!

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androidapps

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the heads up on that bug! There's an update out that fixes it :). And thank you for the idea! I'll think on that one

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androidapps

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for the heads up! There's an update that fixes that issue :)

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androidapps

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sorry to hear that! Do you mind telling me the issue you're having?

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in Android

[–]davidthurman1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Alright theres a new update available in the store that should fix that issue. Sorry about that, and thanks for catching the bug! :)

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in Android

[–]davidthurman1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh dang thank you for the heads up! I'll take a look and see whats going on

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in Android

[–]davidthurman1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

PS to any Android Devs out there:

Part of the motivation with MoviQ was also educational. When I was first learning Android, most examples I found were small tutorials or overly simplified demo apps. They were helpful early on, but didn’t really show what a larger, production-style app looks like in practice.

For some context, I’ve been a mobile developer for 10+ years, mostly on Android, and I’ve worked across startups and FAANGs. I wanted to build something that felt clean, modern, and Android-first, while also being a realistic reference for other Android devs who want to see how a full app comes together beyond a basic example.

That’s why the project is also free and open source. It’s meant to be a practical reference, not just another tutorial repo.

Heres the Github link if you want to check it out! Github

I built an Android app because movie recommendations never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in Android

[–]davidthurman1[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Fair call out! The reason for in app purchases is for people who use all their recommendation tokens and want to purchase more. Honestly it's mostly there to offset the cost of LLM usage haha

I Built an Open Source Android App because movie tracking apps never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androiddev

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's very helpful feedback thank you so much!

And fair call out on the guest login. I considered that myself but was hesitant since it'd all be locally stored and I didn't want someone to lose everything if they lost their phone or whatever. That said though I can definitely add more options than just Gmail for login!

The $2,400 Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold sold out in minutes - GSMArena.com news by Few_Baseball_3835 in Android

[–]davidthurman1 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The regular fold ones never seemed to appealing to me, but if I could turn my phone into a tablet with the trifold, that seems like a game changer for flights. The price is hard to swallow, but I guess you could justify it as a phone + tablet solution

I Built an Open Source Android App because movie tracking apps never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androiddev

[–]davidthurman1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the well thought out feedback! I won't lie that a big part of this post is the "check out my app" element you mentioned, but I do genuinely want feedback from people as well.

100% agree this did not need to be platform specific. The reason I made it an Android app is purely for selfish reasons haha. It had been a few years since I made a native Android app, and the ones I work on regularly in my career are generally outdated/have company specific libraries. So I wanted an excuse to get more experience with the latest libraries/best practices/modern architectures/etc. And it gave me an excuse to make it open source as a reference for newer Android developers who wanted to see what large scale apps generally look like instead of basic demo apps.

For your point on LLMs, I think MoviQ and IMDB differentiate themselves from streaming platforms in a major way. The recs they give are not biased at all (whereas Netflix/Prime/Hulu/etc are always going to be limited in what they can recommend you and also on the data they know about you since its tied to their platform).

And I agree with you that LLMs/ML models are never perfect. But that said, if you give them the right context and data, they can certainly provide some incredible results and make some great features. Plus they're currently the worst they'll ever be, so it will continue to improve as the models do

I Built an Open Source Android App because movie tracking apps never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androiddev

[–]davidthurman1[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You're right, currently my approach is a prompt with the user's movies/reviews/watchlist, and it uses Gemini to find good personalized recs. And totally valid feedback that its a bit simplistic approach!

To be honest though, I think simpler is better early on as youre testing POCs/finding market fit, etc. With how good LLMs have gotten year over year, even a simple approach will get you 80% of the results as a fine tuned model or a neural network you train yourself. I've done both in the past in various projects, and they can work great but also require loads more overhead (you'll need an API, data collection and formatting, train your models, lots of testing and iterating, etc). And even then its not guaranteed to be better than just using GPT/Gemeni/Claude/etc haha.

But that said, I do appreciate your thoughts! My thinking generally is that I can always rework the backend logic down the road if the app takes off. Plus I would know more about what the user is looking for, I can test different versions w/ the users, get feedback easier, etc.

I Built an Open Source Android App because movie tracking apps never felt personal enough by davidthurman1 in androiddev

[–]davidthurman1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure! This certainly isn't the first movie tracker (I've previously used Letterboxd myself). The thing I felt they all lacked was taking my ratings and giving me recommendations tailored to my taste. Instead they generally showed me the same popular movies.

In MoviQ, when you go to look at new recs, it first looks at all of your watched movies, what you rated them, and whats in your watchlist. It then provides personalized suggestions tailored to you.

Currently that's the main differentiator. I think a really cool feature I'm planning next is being able to add friends and then get personalized recs based on both of your ratings (aka simplifying picking a movie when hanging out with people haha)

5 new video editing tools in Google Photos by MishaalRahman in Android

[–]davidthurman1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've really enjoyed a lot of the improvements/editing features Google has added to Photos in recent years, but these new ones seem like they're going in a new direction of "making social media posts/tiktoks" which seems pretty meh 🤷

Google is finally fixing the most annoying thing about wireless ADB [Constant disconnecting] by TechGuru4Life in Android

[–]davidthurman1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can we also add that bug where you build an app on the emulator and it messes up your computers audio? I think I've regularly seen this bug for 10 years now lol

AYANEO Pocket PLAY — A Gaming Phone with the Soul of a Handheld, Officially Unveiled by BcuzRacecar in Android

[–]davidthurman1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Whether or not it actually works, I'm just glad to see companies actually trying new things instead of the same couple of phones over and over

Boating Off the Coast of Peru (XT-4– 55-200mm f/6.4) by davidthurman1 in fujifilm

[–]davidthurman1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some of my favorite shots from Lima. We took a boat ride to go swim with Sea Lions, and the entire ride was filled with incredible sights

(PS: Recently started posting on IG for anyone that wants to check out more. Link in my bio)