I am still going through the appeals process to persuade Google to let me keep OpenSeizureDetector on Play Store.
The reason it is difficult is because it uses the SEND_SMS permission to send SMS text messages automatically without user intervention – this is considered a ‘Dangerous’ permission because you could do bad things with that power if you mis-used it.
They rejected my original proposal for an exception on the grounds that sending SMS text messages automatically is not essential ‘core’ functionality for the app – I am appealing saying that it is essential functionality for many users (if you do use this, it might help if you could confirm by dropping me a note to graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk, or the openseizuredetector facebook page).
I have now hit a problem in that all published apps need to comply with their policies, so I need to make the current beta-test version the main published one (because V2.5.x is not compliant with play store policies).
Therefore this weekend I will take V2.6.4, do some final tidying up, and publish it as V3.0.x (new major version because we are adding Garmin and fitbit support as well as Pebble).
Thank you to those who have tested V2.6.4 on Android V9 for me, because I don’t have an Android V9 device – it has given me enough confidence to press ‘go’ and hopefully not break the system for users – I will publish an ‘in case of emergency’ set of instructions to get you back to the current live version if necessary.
Please get in touch if you have any concerns about this, and if you can confirm that you do use SMS alerts, because it is proving a lot of hassle to keep that functionality!
Thanks, Graham.