New versions of Apklis, Picta and toDus are released
On Thursday afternoon, the new versions of the applications Apklis, Picta and toDus, developed by the Z-17 team, a project sponsored by the University of Computer Sciences (UCI), Etecsa and the Scientific-Technological Park of Havana, were presented at Pabexpo.
The presentation was attended by the Minister of Communications, Mayra Arévich Marín.
Haniel Cáceres Navarro, desarrollador principal de toDus, la aplicación cubana de mensajería instantánea y colaborativa, afirmó que se trata de una nueva aplicación. “The toDus we all knew, in a few hours will begin to undergo a total metamorphosis, because it will have a new image, much cleaner, more accessible, attached to the most modern international standards.”
The structural change of the app has allowed it to migrate to the web “and hopefully one day it can migrate to iOS,” said Cáceres Navarro.
In addition to the new interface, toDus has several new options and features: application battery saving settings on the phone (a setting that improves the notification system), the automatic downloading of multimedia files and the quality of images when they are sent.
The developers included a secure folder, with two passwords, to protect private chats.
The update also included read confirmations in group chats, reactions to messages, groups having multiple administrators, editing photos and videos before sending them, and statuses, which will last for 48 hours.
The main developer of toDus announced that “catalogs of up to 10 products are coming for the platform’s users. We have bots, which are conversational entities that will allow us to speed up the work, especially for companies.”
Apklis, the Cuban application store, also renewed its interface in the new version.
The reason for the change, according to Yaiselis Ramírez Mastrapa, Apklis’ project manager, was that a segment of its users, high consumers of video games, wanted direct access to this content.
“We’re talking about separating video games from applications,” she explained.
From the design of the new app’s APK, “it becomes much more feasible to search for applications by category,” she said.
Ramírez Mastrapa said that Apklis has a new download system, which “helps to ensure that they do not break in the process due to network changes or coverage problems”.
The app also incorporates its own download manager and the payment system was improved so that when users buy an app, they have no problems downloading it.
“They can automatically update all the applications, which are put in a queue, so they don’t overlap with each other, and they can leave Apklis and come back,” she added.
