Hi Nick,
Similar to Etienne we are an ecological consultancy where a significant part of our workflows involve digitising detailed vegetation polygons based on a combination of field observation and high resolution aerial imagery. Our botanists usually digitise the polygons in the field using Collector, but all of them have reported this is slower and more cumbersome using the point on target method in Field Maps. Fieldwork usually needs to be completed within tight timeframes, any loss of productivity in the field has significant knock on effects.
As mentioned by others above, we also do rapid field collection of individual flora and fauna observations. It is much more important for our field staff to be able to make a quick estimation of the location by touching on a map than to get a precise location as often hundreds of observations are made in a day.
While the Collector Classic methods of capturing polygons is preferable to the Field Maps method, it is not ideal as features that should have coincident boundaries need to have overlaps and gaps tidied up and rough edges smoothed out post fieldwork. This is a time consuming process for our GIS staff.
Having the ability to freehand draw polygons like the markup in Field Maps using a stylus but with the auto-complete function available in the webapp builder edit widget to capture geometry into polygon layers would be ideal for us. It'd also be useful to have the ability to switch between the different methods of capture. We exclusively use Android tablets for data capture.
We are in the process of updating the majority of our devices to the Samsung Galaxy SM-P610 model.
It would be really helpful if you could provide me some information on esri's current thinking on this, if similar changes have been considered for future Field Maps updated and a rough estimate of timeframes if they are.
Kind regards,
James.