Recently we ran a survey related to DataExplorer and one of the questions was about features people want us to introduce into the product. The second most requested one was adding support for iPhone. No wonder - according to some reports 3/4 of all iOS devices registered in the enterprise are phones. So after some thinking we decided to bring iPhone support into DataExplorer.
This was not a trivial task - DataExplorer was designed for a much larger iPad screen. In addition to that some of the views used on an iPad cannot be used on an iPhone (popups, for example), others behave differently (such as toolbars in landscape orientation on any phone smaller than iPhone 6 Plus). But that was an interesting journey: the first time seeing your app running on a small iPhone 5s instead of a large iPad, making things that didn't fit originally on a phone screen look good in a modified, simpler UI. And as a result you can now enjoy DataExplorer on your iPhone too!
The one big problem of the iPhone is a small screen, even on a quite large iPhone 6 Plus. It's fine for simple UI, but becomes a problem for complex master-detail screens used throughout DataExplorer apps. So we had to come up with a solution for this usability problem. We had several ideas, but ultimately decided that the best way to resolve this issue is to move detail screens away from a master screen and show them separately as drill-down screens. This way a detail screen is just one tap away (as it always was), but that requires one tap or swipe to go back to a master screen. We think it's a good trade-off considering that now the data on the both master and detail screens can be easily consumed even on a small iPhone screen.
It's very easy to turn on this feature: just resize a master screen all the way to the bottom (or to the right if a master-detail screen is oriented horizontally) and you are done. After this the list of detail screens works not as a tab control, but as a toolbar with a button for each detail. This functionality can be used when the master screen is a form or a map (showing a single entity) - it doesn't make much sense when used with a list (since it already has its own drill-down screen).
Because of the differences in screen sizes, the user interface of iPhone apps is different than the UI of iPad apps. Due to this we decided to build separate demos specifically for iPhones: "OData Sample for iPhone" and "North Wind for iPhone". Please take a look at them while trying the new DataExplorer on your iPhone. The rest of the samples are designed for iPad, but you can still open them on a phone to see the limitations of a smaller phone screen :-)
Please try DataExplorer on your iPhone and let us know what you think. We always appreciate your feedback that helps us build a better product for you.