I had intended to release the new version of the OpenSeizureDetector Android App just after Christmas, but have had a few issues:
- Google Play now requires us to target a recent version of Android. This required quite a lot of code changes, because I was still targeting a very old version – I think I have it working now.
- I decided to fix the ‘feature’ where you sometimes had to re-boot the phone after changing settings, or it did odd things. It took a lot of finding, but fixed now. (for those who are interested, it was a race condition – often the start-up activity was being called before the background service had terminated. If this happened the background service did not shutdown and re-start as intended, so I ended up with two copies of the data source running with different settings – hence odd behaviour. I added a delay between asking the background service to shutdown, and starting the start-up activity, which cured it)
- Google wants me to take away the need for the SEND_SMS permission. Unfortunately I think we need it if we want to send SMS text messages automatically – Google’s recommended alternative approach just displays a SMS composing screen, and the user has to press ‘send’, which is no use.
- Google judged that sending SMS was not a core part of the App so said I need to take away that requirement, or they will delete it on March 9th.
- I have started the appeals process explaining that sending SMS is a core part of the app, so hopefully they will agree.
- If not I will end up having two versions of the App – one on Goggle play store that can not send SMS messages, and another that you will have to download manually if you want SMS functionality – I hope to avoid that, because I am always very suspicious about downloading apps from random websites….
I have released V2.6.1 for Beta testing (Google allow this until March 9th). This version includes support for Garmin watches.If you would like to test the new version, please sign up for testing here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/uk.org.openseizuredetector, and feed back any issues to graham@openseizuredetector.org.uk.
Thanks!