2010-07-23

Now I also have to complain about the Android Market

Until today I was really happy with the Android Market. But until now I just was a user of the Android Market. But what happened?

Today I opened a developer account for the Android Market. My plan was to offer a small little app in two versions: Free and paid. It's quite common in the Android Market and I have seen something like this many times in the Market.

I really wished that the Market had something similar to Handango where you can upload a free "demo" version and the "full version" that a paying customer gets together. Unfortunately this isn't possible!

And even worse: You even cannot have two apps that use the same name space. (the package attribute of the Manifest file). That means you cannot easily create a free and a paid version from the same code base.

There are already some ideas how to work around this but all of them are less than ideal.

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1222302/android-multiple-custom-versions-of-the-same-app and http://droidin.net/2009/05/13/android-multiapp/ for more about that.

6 comments:

  1. do you have a demo version of Bluetooth GPS Provider? I want to test it with Navitel or other gps software

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  2. There is no demo version of Bluetooth GPS Provider. I realized that this isn't necessary since you can uninstall an app bought at the market within 24 hours and Google won't charge you for the app. I think 24h should be ok to test the app. So my advise is to buy the app and if it doesn't work with Navitel give it back (uninstall) within 24 hours. It would be also great if you could send me a mail if it works or not.

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  3. That's a pitty. I wanted to buy "Bluetooth GPS Provider", but it is not available on my market (Lithuania), Google states, that priced applications are not still available for this country :(

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  4. Hi, i have a question about the possibility of use a usb gps, not only a bluetooth. Can you give me some way to contact you (mail, skype, etc.)?

    I'm ussing my google account so you can contact me this way.

    Thanks

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  5. @Luis: Unfortunately there is no official way in Android to interact with an USB slave device. So it's currently not possible to do that. (Okay there might be some ways to hack it on certain devices.) In the future Android might add official support for that but currently I can't help you with that.

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  6. Oh. I suppose that if i get a /dev/something that acts like /dev/rfcomm we can use like a gps.

    Ok then.

    Thank

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