A banking app that opens before you have finished lifting your phone.
On both stores. The link goes to Orbit’s site, where the download buttons live.
· What it moved
0 s
Cold start
Down from 3.9s on a four-year-old Android
0
Store rating
Up from 3.1, across two releases
0 x
Daily active users
With no new features shipped
0
Weeks of work
01 The brief
Orbit had a good product and a one-star problem. The reviews were never about features — they were about the four seconds it took to see a balance, and the spinner that reappeared on every tab switch.
They had shipped eleven feature releases in a year. The rating had gone down each time.
02 What we did
We stopped the feature roadmap for a quarter and rebuilt the shell.
The balance screen now renders from a local cache the instant the app opens, then reconciles against the API behind the scenes — so the first frame is instant even on a cold start over 3G. Tab switches hold their state. The transaction list is virtualised, so a five-year history scrolls the same as a five-day one.
We profiled on a four-year-old Android on purpose, not a simulator. Every animation that cost more than sixteen milliseconds on that device was cut, including two we were quite fond of.
03 How it landed
Cold start went from 3.9 seconds to 0.4. The store rating climbed from 3.1 to 4.8 over the following two releases, and daily active users more than doubled without a single new feature being added.
· The work
· How it ran
The whole thing took 11 weeks, with Orbit in the room for every phase.
Weeks 1–2
Traced every screen on real low-end hardware and wrote down what each interaction actually cost.
Weeks 3–5
Rebuilt navigation, caching and state so the first frame never waits on the network.
Weeks 5–9
Redesigned balance, transactions and transfers around the new performance budget.
Weeks 10–11
Phased release to 5% of users, watched crash-free rate for a week, then everyone.
What Orbit said
Our app shipped on time, on budget, and the App Store reviews mention the UI more than the features.
· Still running
On both stores. The link goes to Orbit’s site, where the download buttons live.
Next project
Ferrous
· More work
Same studio, same thread, different problem.