Android app development - Highs and Lows

CSSE09

I was inspired by Ricky91t's thread on his experience on making an app for iphones and thought I'd throw my story up about my app development for android.

About myself: In Septemeber I'll be going in to 3rd year Comp Sci and Software Engineering at NUI Maynooth. I've mainly been using java in college and on my own little projects which helped a great deal when I decided to mess around with android apps.

It's been a lot of fun and the most infuriating project at the same time.
I started off with some basic hello world tutorials and a few other calculation type tutorials in the beginning. This really helped as I had never used xml before. (I'll dig through my bookmarks in the next few days and put them up, I found them really useful)

I decided on making a free unit converter with no ads, no bells and whistles just a simple unit converter that doesn't take up a huge amount of space or a drain on resources. However while keeping the size down I wanted to have something that looked well and would be available in multiple languages.

I registered as a developer ($25 once off) and after a week I uploaded it on to the market. However a week later when I went to update it I hit a massive problem. When uploading the new apk file google said my certificate did not match. I had a backup, tried that and again error. After many many hours of trying everything possible there was no solution and the ~150 people that had it installed would no longer receive any updates.
I had confirmed that the new file was signed correctly and the cert matched but googles system wouldn't accept it. I contacted support - no joy so I re-uploaded it two days ago, made a new cert and took multiple backups immediately. To say this annoyed me would be an under statement and I felt bad for not being able to contact the people that had downloaded it to begin with to apologise, this really was the worst case scenario.


This is what I came up with:

Converts


I learned a huge amount from making this simple app, I decided early on to make it for 2.2+ as even the basic android phones run 2.2 now. I also used google translator and native speakers where possible to help translate it in to French,German,Spanish,Portuguese,Russian and Italian.
I also had multiple files for each icon for high res, medium res and low res. This did increase the size of the file slightly but I wanted it to look well on every device that downloaded it.

I'm sure I've forgotten plenty but I learned a huge amount. I have more updates planned for the future and I'd be grateful for any suggestions and criticisms.

For anyone that managed to read all that I tip my hat to you

srsly78

Certificates work fine, there would be uproar if it was bugged. You made a simple mistake is all.

CSSE09

srsly78 wrote: »

Certificates work fine, there would be uproar if it was bugged. You made a simple mistake is all.

Any ideas what that was then? I had a backup of the file, the password was definitely correct as it was a password I use often and I confirmed it wasn't signed with a debug key.
There was a few threads posted from other people 2-3 days before hand as well with the same issue. I used eclipse for signing and when it failed to upload I then exported it unsigned and signed it manually.

Ricky91t

Good luck with your app developing! Its good to see someone else sharing their story

I had a whole lot of trouble with apple certificates too( though not as much as you ) they're probably the worst thing about app developing.
I'm the same as you doing mainly Java in my degree but didn't have an android device to test/run/show off the app on so went for iOS first, though objective-C is quite easy to pick up anyway. I'm not sure if its the same for you but my main reason for doing an app was cause I wanted to program something interesting and not just an application that cycles through colours on click or something.

I'd be lying if I said I don't care if it's not successful but it isn't one of my priorities, it'd be nice to see lots of people using it but I'm just pleased I now have something to talk about at an interview if I chose a mobile applications company( which I have :pac: )

Atomic Pineapple

The Apple process is much more complex than the Android one though, I develop for both and it took about a week to understand Apple's requirements when it came to both adhoc and full release distribution compared to a day on Android.