Yota application for Windows Phone - from Novosibirsk to St. Petersburg

As it is known to owners of smartphones on Windows Phone, until recently Yota did not have its own client based on this OS. We will not hide, initially we planned to launch a mobile application on three platforms. This turned out to be quite laborious, and in the process, unfortunately, I had to sacrifice one of the versions. As you might guess, this was a mobile client under WP. And since for the owners of SIM cards Yota the application is the main tool for managing services, now it's a holiday on the street for the owners of Windows Phone - our official application has been released. And the most surprising thing is that two programmers from Novosibirsk, who once released an unofficial client for Yota subscribers, became its authors.

Although the proportion of Windows Phone users is relatively small, including in absolute terms, since the launch we have constantly received many questions why we do not support this system. We have really been carrying out plans to develop a client for this platform for a long time, since it is important for us to provide the opportunity to conveniently manage our services to all or almost all owners of smartphones. In addition, the availability of a Windows Phone application would allow our customers to freely migrate from one OS to another.

For a long time, for various reasons, we did not have the opportunity to make an application for Windows Phone on our own. At some point, the developers from Novosibirsk contacted us with the story that they won the hackathon with the application prototype, the guys asked for our API and data access parameters. Initially, we regarded this as an experiment - thanks to young talents, an unofficial client could appear in the market, and our users with Windows Phone-smartphones would be able to see information about the balance, the balance of minutes, etc. In the end, we offered the guys cooperation. And you know what? They agreed, and now they are in our team.
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And now let us give the floor to them.

From you-Yota to Your Yota

In early 2015, we both bought a Yota SIM card. We liked the quality and cost of the operator’s services, but since our smartphones were on Windows Phone, there were problems with installing the proprietary application. I had to insert SIM cards into Android-smartphones of my friends, set up services, pull out SIMs, insert into my smartphones ... In general, it was not very convenient. By some lucky coincidence, at the end of April of the same year we went to Tomsk, to the hackathon Microsoft Developer Tou r. The idea for the development of our project lay on the surface - Yota-client for Windows Phone. Honestly, we did not expect to win a prize, because that hackathon was more devoted to games and technologies - it seemed that the development of “buns” on the Microsoft platform was more welcomed, and we had a purely applied application, which is called, for ourselves. However, the prototype we created during the night took the first place.

The victory inspired us so much that when we returned home we “finished our” development and in late May we uploaded it to the Windows Phone app store.



The design was copied from the first official Android client. In our version, we tried to provide at least minimal functionality, because we did it, in fact, for ourselves. The application sent subscriber data to WebAPI Yota and received various information in response. For example, the last of the unofficial versions of the application that we released allows you to:

• choose a tariff for new subscribers;
• change connection conditions;
• view balance, information about connected packages and the current cost of services;
• replenish the account using a bank card;
• display the current account status on a “live” tile on the main screen of Windows Phone.

First, we called the application simply Yota, and in the description made a note that it is unofficial. Immediately noticed a sharp increase in downloads, people looked at the name and, without reading the description, decided that this is the official application. They wrote: “Finally, hurray!”, “Why is the functionality on Windows Phone incomplete?”, Etc. We created the VKontakte group to support the application, and we were just overwhelmed with similar messages.

Somewhat later, in order to avoid such confusion in the future, we decided to rename the application. Called you-Yota, and after a while changed to Your Yota. Under this name, the application is still available for download, some users still consider it official. In our group, too, periodically leave requests like: “Please add us the number changing functionality”.

By the way, today his average estimate is 4.1, and the total number of downloads has exceeded 100 thousand. Frankly, we did not even count on such success. For some time the application was held in the top of the best, and then it was pushed by the “Russian Post” :)

As it was said earlier, we uploaded the first version of the application at the end of May 2015, and in the middle of summer we were invited to talk in person by an employee of the St. Petersburg office Yota. We arranged to meet. It so happened that we individually went on vacation to St. Petersburg. And when we were offered to move to the Northern capital and start creating the already official Yota application for Windows Phone, we didn’t really hesitate. Even despite the availability of work in Novosibirsk.

Yota on Windows Phone. Now - officially

Our new mobile application - already official - was created from scratch. When developing it, we, of course, focused on the functionality of versions for Android and iOS. In the official version of the application for Windows Phone, you can contact support, change the number, bind a bank card. New customers will also be able to take advantage of our current promotions and get the first month for free .



However, the novelty can boast of innovations that are not yet available on other platforms. This is primarily about the component, which made it possible to transfer most of the logic of interaction with the Genesys support chat server into a separate SDK. The component is cross-platform and will be used on iOS and Android in the future. The second important innovation is the transition to a new concept of WebAPI, which allows to simplify the logic on the client and reduce the cost of testing. I would also like to note that the mobile application uses the “trick” of the Windows platform - live tile, which we hope will settle on the desktops of all users of the application :) When creating the interface, we focused not only on corporate identity, but also on Microsoft recommendations. Somewhere we observed them, but somewhere we deliberately moved them away so that the interface was more harmonious.

From the plans for the near future - to launch support for international roaming services in the application and the hint system, as in other platforms.

We invite all smartphone users on Windows Phone to download the Yota application and form their own opinion on how successful it has been. We are waiting for your feedback!