From the Editor's Desk: Photo Sphere and single sign-on

Views: Beach > anywhere else. by Phil Nickinson

That's a Photo Sphere I took at Pensacola Beach yesterday afternoon on the Samsung Galaxy S5 using the Google camera app that's available in Google Play. Why use Google's camera and not Samsung's? For the simple reason we pointed out weeks ago — Samsung's app doesn't have it built in, so you have to download it separately. From Samsung's app store. And I have no idea what my Samsung username or password is.

Google Play, on the other hand, is readily available. In the time it would have taken me to dig up my Samsung credentials in 1Password, I'd already downloaded and began shooting with Google's camera app. That's an argument for Samsung to use some sort of single sign-on method as much as anything else. In fact, it's to the point that if you don't use some sort of SSO — as in you sign in with your Google or Facebook or Twitter credentials — you're doing it wrong.

And implementation matters, too. We've got SSO here with our Mobile Nations Passport, which lets you have a single log-in for all of our Mobile Nations sites, but we need to implement it a little better, particular with the Google log-in in our apps, so that all you have to do is choose the proper account, and not re-enter your credentials.

And then's the matter of data sync. So many games still fail to properly employ this. They might share your scores on Google Play Games, but that's it. And that's no good. For an example of how it should be done, turn no further than Monument Valley. Sign in to Google in the game, and it syncs your progress across all your devices. Simply put, that's the way it should work.

source: androidcentral