xda-developers » All Android

XDA University: Crafting Recovery-Flashable Packages

Mike Szczys — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:00:51 +0000

Those of us who use Linux on a day to day basis don’t think twice about sinking our fingers into the system files that govern how our devices perform. For instance, I use an LG L9 and was quite comfortable playing around with the way my SD card was being mounted in order to improve performance. For those who aren’t at home with the way the OS works, adding a startup script with a few lines of code might as well be witchcraft. That’s why flashable zip files are so handy for simple tasks and indispensable for complex projects. If you do it right, all the end-user needs do is copy a file to his SD card and reboot into recovery to flash the package.

There are some automatic tools out there that can help create these files. In fact, we’ve already covered at least one of them. But there’s really no substitute for knowing exactly what goes into one. XDA Senior Member Denkantor can explain it all, and decided to make an XDA University guide on package for flashing from recovery. Head on over to his original thread to see what he’s up to.

It doesn’t take much to make an update.zip file. Denkantor likes to use 7zip. And if you’re on Windows, he recommends Notepad++. You’ll also need the file(s) you want to flash. The Edify scripting language is what a custom recovery is looking for. You’ll be guided through the basics, but learning more is easy since you can look at any flashable file as an example.

Android App Review: Change Your Phone’s Profile with Profile – XDA Developer TV

Jimmy McGee — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:30:24 +0000

We often want our mobile device to act differently depending on where we are. When we are at the gym, we may want the ringer to be loud so we can hear it over the sound of the treadmills. When we are at the office, we want it to be quiet or silent to not bother your cubicle-dwelling co-workers. But sometimes, we forgot to change our profiles.

XDA Forum Member amithgc has an application to help change profiles and can make your smartphone even smarter. In this video, XDA Developer TV Producer TK reviews Profile Flow. TK shows off the application and gives his thoughts.

Be sure to check out other great XDA Developer TV Videos

Side-Swiping Multitasking with Kakudo

Samantha — Thu, 23 May 2013 07:00:35 +0000

Recovering iPad users may still remember the multitasking function where you can swipe left or right to switch between running apps. I sincerely apologize if you are still trying to put this traumatic period of your life behind you, but your nightmares may be reawakened in the form of Kakudo, an app that brings this feature to the Android operating system.

A surprisingly useful function, XDA Forum Member Acela1230 decided that the iPad was undeserving of such practicality, and took the initiative to bring it over to Android. By simply swiping left or right from the edges of the screen, you can easily switch to other currently active apps on your device. A minimizable bar at the bottom of the screen housing shortcuts to your favorite apps can also be revealed with a swipe from the bottom up. Customization is also available, allowing for different sensitivity levels of the swipe-able areas, the icon and swipe bar size, as well as toggling on and off the notification icon, the app drawer, and start on boot. To turn off or on Kakudo, a master button on the top right hand corner will allow you to do just that. Issues acknowledged by the developer include lag when launching apps at the home screen, and the inability to toggle GPS on and off.

Acela1230 has developed an app for Android that delivers a function that (as a far as I am aware) is unheard of in the Android market, until now. Users of devices running Android 2.3 or newer can download Kakudo for free from the Play store, and are invited to become beta testers at the Google+ group page. If you would like to find out more, be sure to check out the application thread for additional information.

Tasker Alternative: AutomateIt, Automates Your Device Tasks – XDA Developer TV

Jimmy McGee — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:00:23 +0000

XDA Developer TV Producer Kevin wants to help make your life easier. (What a nice guy!) First he showed you the powerful Tasker App with its Advanced Uses, Intermediate uses , and Basic uses. Then, Kevin showed you an alternative to Tasker called Llama. He covered the basics and expanded on it.

In this part of the series, Kevin gives you what you asked for. Kevin shows you an alternative that has a spiffier UI and a easy to remember name: AutomateIt. So check out all the videos in this Tasker series and make your phone work for you. What are you waiting for? Check out this video.

Be sure to check out other great XDA Developer TV Videos and Kevin’s other videos.

Check out Kevin’s YouTube Channel

One Stop Guide Shop for the Newbie and Dev

Samantha — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:00:36 +0000

It’s been well established that XDA-Developers is the destination for resources relating to technology and development. With the Forums, the Wiki, XDA-University, and XDA-Developer TV; anyone regardless of skill level can visit XDA and learn and partake in development. So it is great to see an extensive compilation of guides from the XDA forums for the newbie and the dev, in one place for your availability and convenience.

Compiled by XDA Recognized Contributor adityalahiri13, the collection of 73 guides ranges from very simple activities such as flashing ROMs and kernels all the way up to compiling from source, theming, and porting features and functions. The guides are conveniently categorized according to the category of development they focus on, such as theming, compiling, and APKs, and numerically labelled for ease of navigation.

The compilation includes excellent guides previously covered on the Portal such as XDA Recognized Contributor sandy7‘s guide on how to port Sony Small Apps to any device, building your own kernel from source by Senior Member thewadegeek, and Senior Member HJ200‘s guide on how ’3D-fying’ your apps.

This compilation of guides is a very bookmarkable page that anyone who is keen on learning development should have as a reference in their browser. It is also a reminder of the helpfulness of the community. Of course, all credit for the guides goes towards their respective authors.

If you would like to check this out, be sure to visit the original thread.

App Analytics, or the Death of the Independent App Developer

Josh — Mon, 20 May 2013 22:00:12 +0000

This is entry number one in a series of articles about tools for app developers, today focusing on app analytics. The goal of these articles is to spur conversation in our new app development forums, so go there and contribute your experiences.

I was on a plane last week, sitting next to a 15-year-old Japanese girl. I was about to pull out my GS3 to play some CCS (Candy Crush Saga for the uninitiated) when I looked to my right and noticed that she was doing the same. A tad embarrassed that I was playing the same game as a girl with a pink Hello Kitty phone case, I got up and walked the aisles. On a not-full 737, I counted six other people actively playing the game. No one was playing anything else.

If you’ve ever played CCS, you know that it was designed from the ground-up to be social and viral. It integrates with Facebook so well that you will find yourself passionately competing with people you haven’t spoken to in a decade. It hits you up for in-app purchases at the exact moment of addiction, but still gives users who would never pay a dime a path to win (and share with others who might be more likely to pay). The actual game is a mediocre knock-off of Bejeweled, which itself is probably a mediocre knock-off of ten prior products. Once you acknowledge that, you realize that you’re obsessed with a game in which far more effort was put into “forcing” you to keep playing (and maybe paying) than innovating with game mechanics. And this is the product dominating the mobile charts.

For this article, we interviewed several providers of app analytics tools: Apsalar, App Annie, Appboy, and Flurry. These are all valuable and powerful tools, and each product has a different focus, each company a unique business model. We also spoke with a developer (who wished to remain anonymous) at a major Silicon Valley startup who insists that Google Anaytics, probably the “default” tool, especially for web devs turned app devs, is all he needs. The conversations we had focused around terms like “viral coefficient,” “user invite process,” “social distribution,” “customer segmentation,” “behavioral segments,” “MAUs,” “DAUs,” etc.

I completely understand if all you’re thinking is, “ain’t nobody got time for that!” There are over 1.5 million apps in the various mobile app stores, and while there are still a few remaining categories dominated by individual developers (including Android tools where XDA members shine), that pool is shrinking. And this is where the XDA app development community diverges: If what you care about is making a cool, free product for the community, we salute you. And truly, those people should stop reading, because you probably don’t have time for any of this. For those who dream of millions of downloads and making a living from apps, ignore analytics at your peril.

Cezary Pietrzak at Appboy tells us, “Building a great product is table stakes, but it’s only a start.” He goes on to give some advanced tips, telling developers to focus on community, content, and context.

Community: “The smartest apps ask only their most active users to rate them or share them with friends, because they expect a much higher response rate among this group.”
Content: “Using push notifications or in-app messages to serve micro-content (rather than plain alerts) can drive engagement significantly. Email is also very effective…”
Context: “The best apps use location data, behavioral triggers, historical usage patterns and other data to create a very relevant, contextual, and personalized experience. Fab alerts you about new sales, Foursquare tells when your friends are nearby, and Circa sends notifications about stories you follow.”

So what are the most valuable pieces of data you can pull from an app analytics package and how can you use that data? Christian Poppelreiter, an account specialist at Flurry says, “Flurry Analytics has sections which report on session duration, session frequency and overall rate of retention as an application ages. Developers can customize how they collect data through events tracking…such as when someone likes a status, shares an article, beats a level, or makes a purchase. Once events are set up, developers can also segment out sections of their audience according to behavior (i.e. purchasers) or according to more traditional audience metrics like age, gender or location.

“There typical length of a session can tell you how many ads might be appropriate to place in an ad supported app. Developers can track how long users typically spend within different sections of the app, can detect when users are most engaged and also see conversion rates.”

The point of this article isn’t to recommend one analytics tool over another, and we’re reluctant to link to company marketing collateral here. But in this case, we think it’s worthwhile if only to emphasize to our typically-independent developer crowd how serious the business of analytics has become: Apsalar pointed us to a case study with Trivi.al, in which they were able to “double their viral coefficient” by leveraging “our funnel analysis to identify a key bottleneck in their user invite process.”

If all of the above sounds daunting, we agree. In fact, we can imagine that it’s rather depressing to most readers: The Zynga/Farmville-ization of apps *is* sad. 95% of users won’t scroll past app number 50 in Play, and it feels like the only way to get there is to release something derivative and then bug/coerce/manipulate users into sharing. Sure, thanks to intense competition among tool providers and the free-ness of Google Analytics, most analytics and marketing tools are easily accessible to any developer, even free in most cases; but the reality is it takes significant time and resources to make the tools work for you. This is not a part-time pursuit for a team of one. In many ways, it feels like the death of the independent app developer.

But we truly don’t want to discourage. XDA is about community and unique ideas that drive the future of mobile development. Maybe our users aren’t building the next CCS, but we’re innovating. Call us idealists, but we think great ideas can still get noticed. Maybe they won’t make you Zynga rich, but they will get downloads and usage—especially among the early adopters here. If that’s the approach you want to take, then here’s the best advice we got during our conversations: Christian at Flurry says, “Focus on your customer experience and design the app the way that you would want to use it if you were the customer. Many developers start with a great idea, but compromise the user experience with something that is either poorly organized, with limited functionality or something that is overrun with advertising. People download apps because they want to perform some kind of task, whether that task is sending a message, reading an article or playing a game. They don’t want to feel disrupted, nor do they want to feel like they’re being given a hard sell, and I think a lot of developers need to tread carefully on the fine line between what engages the user and what earns them money.” We couldn’t agree more.

All of the companies discussed in this article offer some sort of free analytics solution, so it can’t hurt to check them out. If you’re still confused about which one is the best for you, check out our full interviews, which we’ve posted to the forums.

How have you used analytics tools to increase downloads and improve engagement in your products? Do you think the indie app developer stands a chance? Is building a “great” app enough or should the indie developer just give up? Knowledge-sharing, discussion, community are key to keeping independent app development alive. Please share your experiences in the forums.

Sony Releases AOSP Code for Xperia Tablet Z, New HttpClient Android Tutorial Available – XDA Developer TV

Jimmy McGee — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:33 +0000

Sony continues its AOSP initiative by releasing it on the Sony Xperia Tablet Z. That and more are covered by Jordan, as he reviews all the important stories from this week. Included in this week’s news is a tutorial on using HttpClient to upload and download with your App. And in related news, there is an article on how to promote your app.

Jordan talks about the other videos released this week on XDA Developer TV. XDA Developer TV Producer Jayce released a video on resume screening methods that recruiters use, and he follows it up with a video answering questions from the first video and further explaining the information provided. Pull up a chair and check out this video.

Links to stories mentioned:

Check out Jordan’s YouTube Channel and Jordan’s Gaming YouTube Channel

Gear Up Because it’s Time to Save Earth

Samantha — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:00:45 +0000

*Cue Dramatic Music*

Put on your red and blue latex overalls and cape because it’s time to save Earth from the horrors of adorable aliens set on extinguishing all life as we know it. “Everyone you’ve ever known is now relying on you to fend off a devastating attack from space.

Will you accept the mission?”

Well you better, because that’s exactly what you’ll have to do when you pick up your phone and play Save The Earth by XDA Forum Member jay613. A side-scrolling arcade game, you take on the role of ‘Red ‘n’ Blue Latex Man’ in his honorable mission to save Earth. Control him with the on-screen control pad as you shoot waves upon waves of enemy aliens all the while collecting stars used as currency necessary to upgrade your gear, attacks, skills, and attributes.

Delivered with some gorgeous 2D graphics that really stand out and accompanied by appropriate music playing in the background, the game play really is quite fast-paced as you’re maneuvering and dodging your way around the aliens, shooting them, and collecting the stars that are dropped. Completion of missions will unlock different areas of the world you must defend, and achievements and rankings are also thrown in to keep things interesting.

Save The Earth is a well designed and refined game that excels on many fronts such as game play, graphics, and variety. It’s a great side-scroller that fans of the genre will thoroughly enjoy while killing time. The app is compatible with Android versions 2.2 and newer and free from the Play store. More information can be found in the original thread.

Careers in Android: What Hiring Managers Won’t Tell You – XDA Developer TV

Jimmy McGee — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:30:12 +0000

XDA Developer TV Producer Jayce released a video a yesterday talking about a recruiter’s perspective to resumes. Previously, he spoke to people who said that Resumes Don’t Work. However, there are times where you don’t have the luxury of being creative and you must submit a resume to be considered for the job. Today, Jayce answers questions about how resumes are chosen by recruiters.

In today’s episode, Jayce talks about his interview with Cecilia Kong, the director of recruiting at a national search firm, about resumes. Cecilia talks about what makes a resume stand out. Suggestions include tailoring your resume to each job and being clear in your chronology. Check out this video.

Check out Jayce’s other videos and his Careers in Android Series.

Be sure to check out other great XDA Developer TV Videos.

Check out Jayce’s HowToBecomeTV YouTube Channel

Coloring Your Logcat World

Mike Szczys — Sun, 19 May 2013 14:00:52 +0000

Getting feedback for your app during development is as simple as adding logging info where necessary and looking for the output in logcat. But if there’s a lot going on, the task of actually finding the lines can get a little sticky. Logcat does have a rudimentary filtering feature, which was covered in a recent ADB Commands article. But I often find that when I’m using broad (app-wide) filtering, I still spend considerable time scrolling through the output. There’s a tool that can make this a little less tedious by color coding logcat output.

The work is all done with a Python package that parses the logcat output, applying labels and columns as it goes. It monitors the output in real time, but you can also feed it capture files after the fact. You can easily tweak it to do whatever you want using the filter and profile features that Marshall Culpepper included in the project. I’d say you probably won’t have to go beyond user-level options to get it looking the way you wish.

This is obviously targeted at Linux users based on the example commands used in the documentation (egrep, etc). I don’t have a Windows box to test, but logcat and Python are both cross-platform tools, so there’s a chance it would work. Make sure to leave a comment if you are able to give it a whirl.

I found out about this package from a comment in a Reddit thread about a different color coding script.