Hey Andy,
Thanks for testing our beta and for taking the time to give us feedback!
We have had quite a few issues with this work on Android 2.3. Thanks for
forwarding those screenshots, they were very helpful for diagnosing the
issues! We've written a fix for the issue you reported with the tap zone
for the image viewer being larger than expected, and we're working on a fix
for the "Read more" section appearing underneath the article content now.
In terms of images not centring correctly, we knew going in to this that it
wouldn't be possible to have a perfectly centred image in every case. We've
taken several steps to alleviate the problem of images not being perfectly
centred:
1. Tapping on any image (including a lead image) will always show you
the full size image in the image viewer, so if it was awkwardly cropped
then you can see the full image that way.
2. The image in the lead panel is copied there, not moved there, so it's
also still visible in its original context in the article.
3. If there's a face in the lead image, we try to use a library built in
to Android that can do face detection and centre the image using that.
Given the above, we're not going to block releasing the feature because of
this. It's such a massive step forwards in terms of visual appeal that we
don't think not releasing it because of a few edge cases makes sense. If
our team was much larger, we would spend more time on this problem, but
alas, we are a small team (two engineers on the Android app).
In terms of making it a contribution mechanism to lets users centre the
image correctly, we're not focussing on that right now. It's definitely
something we'll think about in the future, but right now our goals are
based on readership, not contribution mechanisms. With such a small team we
can't afford to tackle both at once whilst also maintaining the Android
platform.
Thanks,
Dan
--
Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps
Wikimedia Foundation