The Instant Apps’ power of getting the native app experience with such ease really caught our eye, therefore we took our time and built our own proof of concept. As mentioned in our previous Instant Apps blog post, we came up with a simple, user-friendly app called Splitbilly, that will, as its name suggests, make splitting the bill with friends a breeze.

It allowed us to put the Instant App feature to a test and also provide a good example displaying the practical use of it. Along the way, we got the opportunity to compare it to iOS’s App Clips and see the differences in the approaches iOS and Android have for the same concept.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to check out our App Clips - Proof Of Concept.

The same use-case is presented here.

• User is at the bar and they want to split the bill with friends
• They get the bill that contains a QR code
• By scanning the QR code user can access the URL which will, in turn, open the Instant App

The main idea from the experience standpoint is to provide a straightforward Scan, Select, Pay flow so the users can get the task done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Users can scan the QR code and open the Instant App.

The App can be opened from an invitation a user gets from a friend, and it can be shared with someone else, as well. The great thing about this is that both iOS and Android users will have a very similar experience, so the process will be nice and smooth regardless of the operating system.

If there is a problem with opening Instant Apps on some devices, users might want to enable the “Upgrade web links” option by doing the following:

• Open the Google Play Store app
• From the side menu, open the Settings
• Find the Google Play Instant option and open it
• Enable the “Upgrade web links” option

This tells the device to check if web links can be opened as Instant Apps, so if the link the user taps on is “Instant App-enabled” it will open the Instant App.

As presented, the Android Instant Apps experience has some similarities to iOS’s App Clips. Nevertheless, there are some differences. Here is a quick summary of the technical differences between them.

Our goal was to create a straightforward example so you can easily get the big picture of how promising this concept is. To achieve this goal in the desired shape and form, we want to thank our friends from 8y5 studio for all their help and support.

We at the App Crafters think that the potential is there and we’d like to see this idea gain even more recognition in the future. So why wait? Let’s do it together!