New OGS Android App

My bad, I think I got that from the other guy making an OGS app :stuck_out_tongue: he hosted on F-droid and said heā€™d be happy to move it to android store if someone else paid for it :stuck_out_tongue:

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I canā€™t install on my xiaomi redmi 2 :frowning:

Are you by any chance on Android KitKat (aka Android 4.4.4)? GSMArena seems to indicate thatā€™s the Android version the phone was relased with ( https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_2-6884.php ).

If that is the case, then Iā€™m afraid it wonā€™t work because a few months ago I dropped support for the old Android versions. It was simply taking too much time to keep the app going for those old phones while they were about 3% (and dropping) of the user base. Iā€™m sorry, this a one-man show and I do have a full time job, there is only so much time I can dedicate to this and the phone you are talking about is 3.5 years oldā€¦

@iLq

Yes, it is. Android 4.4.4 (KitKat).
Ok. Thanks for the answer.

3.5 yo phone is obsolete. Sad!

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Sadly, it is. Particularily since Google abandoned KitKat a while ago, meaning the system (particularily the web browser) does not get security updates.

note: a 3.5 yo phone need not be obsolete if the user simply keeps up with pushed software updates. My phone is 2.5 years old and keeps up fairly well :slight_smile:

But what happens when the phone vendor stops support for the latest Android for that phone?

Thatā€™s what obsoletes the phone.

Just a week ago my wifeā€™s phone (Galaxy 3) told her that the ANZ App is not compatible with her phoneā€¦

Then you either need a better vendor or a better phone.

I never understand what it is that makes old phones obsolete. Surely they all work the same, with some RAM, some memory, a CPU and GPU, bluetooth, wifi and some phone connection. Why is it so difficult to upgrade a 3 year old phone to the newest version of android? Shouldnā€™t it just work? Or does there really need to be a lot of phone specific work on the android distribution.

I feel itā€™s beneficial for phone companies to stop upgrading phones, since that means you have to buy a new one every so many years to keep using your apps. Or is there actually a good reason why a four year old phone canā€™t run Android 7?

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Samsung. Galaxy. Top of the line when I bought it.

Well, this, but I wouldnā€™t put all the blame on the companies. Corporations are not good or evil, they just follow profit. And it so happens that in todayā€™s materialistic world it makes more sense to invest resources into creating the newest shiniest phone than in maintaining old ones. People in afluent regions (such as in London where I live) always get the latest and greatest iPhone (with just a few odd men out getting the latest and greatest Android).

Hence economic success demands that you make the shiniest most premium-looking phone and spend millions on marketing campaigns that create the image of ā€œcoolnessā€ for your phone. Whether that phone will work or not in 3 years time is irrelevant, people in London (and other such places) will buy it nevertheless.

Perhaps then the society that forces the profit-seeking corporations to do this is more to blame for the situation. If consumers would value longevity in a phone corporations would offer it.

At least thatā€™s my two cents. For me the decision to drop support for old phones was a technical one. Google changed the APIs a lot between version 19 and 21 (KitKat an Lollipop) and I was forced with the decision of either:

  1. making the app look as bad as those for KitKat looked (which would not fly in todayā€™s market)
  2. writing bits of the app twice, once for API 21+, one for API 19 and then adding the code to choose between them depending on the phone.
  3. drop support for API 19.

I discarded option 1 because I use the app to learn how to do new things the job market here in the UK is unforgiving. Option 2 went soon after since I donā€™t have the time to finish the app as it is, let alone if I had to write it twice in parts. At the time of the decision there were about 200 monthly users, only about 4 of them on API 19ā€¦

PS: At the time of this writing we have about 949 MAUs (monthly active users, defined as 4-weeks), 489 WAUs and 257 DAUs

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Yes, I get the economical point, but Iā€™m not sure why itā€™s so difficult to keep the old phones supported. I mean, with computers you can pretty much install whatever you want on any computer. Sure, the latest OS doesnā€™t work so well on 15 years old hardware, but there is at least the option for that. What is it that makes a 3 year old phone unable to update their OS and get their apps working again?

Also, I donā€™t blame you at all, I totally get your position and am honestly very grateful that you decided to develop your app in the first place, let alone involve the community and keep us updated! :slight_smile:

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Now that is a more complex question, one to which I can only speculate. I think the difference come with the rate of change and more competition in both hardware and software.

Classic cumputing technology I feel has reached a plateu, and it reached it quite a few years ago. Sure, the processors get slightly better each year - perhaps one year they use 10% less power, perhaps the next they are 10% fasterā€¦ but all of that is just marginal. Part of the problem is of course that intel has no real competition (the only other company worth mentioning is AMD but they are way behind in market share). Another part is that the technology itself has reached a level of maturity in which any meaningful gains cost so much to not make them economically viable.

This wasnā€™t always the case though, as those old enough to remember the 90s for example. There were several companies vying for the lionā€™s share of the CPU market and every iteration was quantitatively and qualitatively better. Some software or another required this processor or that version of DOS or windows or it refused to work. Mobile computing is in a similar phase now. Phones now are much more powerful that phones 3 years ago.

Not to mention the software frontā€¦ Microsoft never had much competition for their MsDOS and then Windows. Versions of windows were few and far between and Microsoft were not inclined to radically change them anyway since they had little reason to.

Contrast that to the mobile world though where Apple is simply killing phones that are 2 years old and designing a new version of the OS that targets specifically the latest hardware. If Google is to keep up they have to radically improve Android from one year to the next (as indeed they do). Such big changes in turn come with loss in backwards compatibility, but in order to stay in the market with Apple who does not do backwards compatibility at all is just the price you have to pay.

Well, again, thatā€™s just my oppinion :slight_smile: This is one of those questions you can go and discuss for days on end :slight_smile:

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@MrAlex, no problem, Iā€™m not the ā€œreligiousā€ kind of mobile phone user. iOS is a major chunk of potential users, though, I believe no one would discount its importance.

That being said, of course you are under no obligation to provide any of your time to this project or the community, which Iā€™m sure is grateful for whichever effort you can put into this side project of yours.

Unfortunately Iā€™m in no position to help with a potential port of the code, and I also donā€™t know whether this can be aided by any kind of cross-development tools. I hope some deft iOS developer comes across this thread and decides to make this his own project as well.

It seems it is the mobile website for me, then. It has its quirks and annoyances, but it is usable enough, and it hasnā€™t kept me from playing at OGS before, and it surely wonā€™t keep me from doing it in the future.

Incidentally, this to me is one of the most important reasons to choose iOS over Android. You can buy a(n admittedly expensive) phone) and have quite a reasonable expectation that it will be supported for 4-5 years. Your expensive phone just became much cheaper, given the longer timespan and/or higher resale value. iOS 12, just out, supports the iPhone 5s, released in 2013. Just my ā‚¬0.02.

If by ā€œsupportedā€ you mean purposely slowed down so that you buy a new model, then yesā€¦ Apple apologises for slowing older iPhones down - BBC News

But Iā€™m not going to get dragged into the holy war. I am an android dev, I donā€™t know how to make an iOS app and I donā€™t plan to learn anytime soon. Not to mention there is no legal way of doing it on a windows machine (becauseā€¦ Apple). Sorry for the inconvenience.

BTW, I recently discovered Chat is implemented! Yay!

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The graphic really is superb! I early suggested darken the color a little bit (canā€™t find where it is) but I also am afraid darker color might ruin the light feeling of current version, which I really love!

@MrAlex do you need help for the developement ? how can we help you ?