I've decided to start giving Nice Battery away. My original, not very well thought out, plan was to sell it for 50 or 75 cents, but I found out the market doesn't allow apps priced less than 99 cents. I never wanted to try to compete with some of the more full-featured battery apps out there that sell for the same price.
But as far as I know, Nice Battery is the only one with the overcharge or time limit warning... If you want a (very) cheap way to manage your power usage in a nice looking package, this might be your battery manager.
Also, you can get to my online store by going to menu --> Other apps ;)
Thanks for downloading! If you have any questions or feature suggestions, please let me know with the email link on the market.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Install Problems
Hello, All. I started this blog so I can communicate better with my Nice Battery customers. Everyone has been very gracious and fair with their feedback and I thank all of you who've picked up the app. It's given me great joy to see people downloading it.
There are problems, however, and I don't yet know how to deal with them. Google and T-Mobile have decided to roll out the newest version of Android to some customers and not others during the month of May. I'm sure there are real issues that this addresses like network bandwidth and possibly hedging against a network-wide bug. BUT it's a real headache for developers.
The number one issue is that power managers will not generally work on both versions of the phone. Google did not want them to work at all in fact and talks about how they will break when the 1.5 (Cupcake) phones come out. All power managers use a small hack to work on the 1.1 phones that most people have.
When 1.5 came out in Spain, France, Germany, and the UK in various forms, I wanted to be ready for it. Blogs were posting pictures of customers in the US getting the update as well (this happens automatically to your phone on a random schedule). So I spent some time upgrading the application to work with 1.5 phones thinking that the little version flag that you set inside your program would prevent 1.1 users from installing it.
Unfortunately, the Minimum version or (minimum SDK) flag does not work for people who've already purchased the program. I got several emails from people who said that the updater installed the new version on a 1.1 phone and now Nice Battery doesn't work.
I then unpublished it from the US market hoping to prevent more issues while I think about solutions. It's just not feasible for me to develop a version that works on both versions of the phone exclusively for the next three weeks while US users get their updates. At the end of May this will just become wasted code that Google doesn't like anyway and I will have to it take out again, leading to more versions and more potential for problems.
Again, there was an issue because updaters can still download. It appears that there is no way for me to prevent updates to the application. AND there is no "maximum SDK" flag that would allow me to prevent 1.5 users from installing it and causing THEM problems.
Another issue is that the market prevents me from buying my own application. I can test my copy of it on my phone, but I can't experience what you all are experiencing with the market. I can't download updates, check availability etc. I'm using a lot of guesswork and trial and error, and none of it is good for Nice Battery's rating or your time.
I'm going to start to send out copies by email of the old version during the month of May. If you have a 1.1 phone (check Settings --> About Phone --> Firmware version) and a software update has messed up your installation, please send me an email and I will send you an install file that will get you through May. My email address is alexbyrnes AT gmail.com. You can also go to Nice Battery on the market and click on the email developer link at the bottom. I'll include instructions with the email.
Thank you all for your patience. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to leave them here or send them to me personally.
There are problems, however, and I don't yet know how to deal with them. Google and T-Mobile have decided to roll out the newest version of Android to some customers and not others during the month of May. I'm sure there are real issues that this addresses like network bandwidth and possibly hedging against a network-wide bug. BUT it's a real headache for developers.
The number one issue is that power managers will not generally work on both versions of the phone. Google did not want them to work at all in fact and talks about how they will break when the 1.5 (Cupcake) phones come out. All power managers use a small hack to work on the 1.1 phones that most people have.
When 1.5 came out in Spain, France, Germany, and the UK in various forms, I wanted to be ready for it. Blogs were posting pictures of customers in the US getting the update as well (this happens automatically to your phone on a random schedule). So I spent some time upgrading the application to work with 1.5 phones thinking that the little version flag that you set inside your program would prevent 1.1 users from installing it.
Unfortunately, the Minimum version or (minimum SDK) flag does not work for people who've already purchased the program. I got several emails from people who said that the updater installed the new version on a 1.1 phone and now Nice Battery doesn't work.
I then unpublished it from the US market hoping to prevent more issues while I think about solutions. It's just not feasible for me to develop a version that works on both versions of the phone exclusively for the next three weeks while US users get their updates. At the end of May this will just become wasted code that Google doesn't like anyway and I will have to it take out again, leading to more versions and more potential for problems.
Again, there was an issue because updaters can still download. It appears that there is no way for me to prevent updates to the application. AND there is no "maximum SDK" flag that would allow me to prevent 1.5 users from installing it and causing THEM problems.
Another issue is that the market prevents me from buying my own application. I can test my copy of it on my phone, but I can't experience what you all are experiencing with the market. I can't download updates, check availability etc. I'm using a lot of guesswork and trial and error, and none of it is good for Nice Battery's rating or your time.
I'm going to start to send out copies by email of the old version during the month of May. If you have a 1.1 phone (check Settings --> About Phone --> Firmware version) and a software update has messed up your installation, please send me an email and I will send you an install file that will get you through May. My email address is alexbyrnes AT gmail.com. You can also go to Nice Battery on the market and click on the email developer link at the bottom. I'll include instructions with the email.
Thank you all for your patience. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to leave them here or send them to me personally.
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