iOS 13.2 Suica Express Transit Update: same great performance, same sloppy UI

iOS 13.2 is in the last beta stage, the official release is due October 30. I am happy to report that Suica Express Transit performance levels remain at the same solid benchmark set by iOS 12.4 and later. This is very good news.

Suica notifications are another matter. Notifications have not recovered from the fast sloppy iOS 12.2 Suica Wallet UI redo in preparation for iOS 13 dark mode and the transition from 3D Touch to Haptic Touch. Regular Suica notifications for transit and purchases work fine, but 3D Touch/Haptic Touch notification shortcuts and user set reminders are still broken. Here’s a quick list of the remaining problems. Let’s hope Apple recovers their attention to detail.

Missing Suica notification Haptic Touch global shortcuts: iOS 12 Suica notification 3D Touch shortcuts for recharge and commute plan renewal were global in nature and appeared on all Suica notifications and user set reminders. Recharge shortcuts have reappeared in regular Suica notifications but are still missing in user reminders. Commute plan renewal reminder shortcuts are completely missing.

Commute Plan Renewal Reminders: In iOS 13.2 no matter the what the user set reminder interval is, the renewal reminder only appears once per current commute plan period and never again, which is useless. iOS 12 Suica commute plan renewal reminders would appear after every transit until the commute plan was either renewed or expired.

Sloppy Japanese localization: Suica is a Japanese card and has specific Japanese terms for card operations: adding money is ‘Charge’= ‘チャージ’. The iOS 13.2 shortcut JP text label shows ‘Add money’ instead of ‘Charge’. This is incorrect and does not match the Suica Wallet card UI label for the same operation. iOS 13 has a sloppy reputation and Suica still has plenty of UI bugs such as the Australian/New Zealand English Suica bug.