Wednesday, April 1, 2009

SMS Popup v0.9.92 out now with text-to-speech!

Android Market should soon show the latest update to SMS Popup - v0.9.92 - I haven't had a lot of time to work on the app, so this release just cleans up some of the code (which as a user you won't really notice) and fixes a few bugs.

The only new thing to appear is TTS (text-to-speech) - you can now have your messages read aloud to you thanks to the amazing eyes-free TTS library. Keep in mind I threw this in at the last minute so it's likely to be buggy - to use it, simply long-press anywhere on the message popup. If you don't have the TTS app installed it will take you through setting things up.

SMS Popup icon
SMS Popup v0.9.92

  • Improvements for status bar notifications (removed correctly now in certain circumstances)
  • Threads marked read correctly now when a message is deleted via the popup
  • Cupcake compatibility
  • Beta feature: Text-to-speech, hear your messages! (long-press on the popup to try this out)
Update: v0.9.93 is also out now, this release just fixes a single bug where notifications sometimes didn't trigger if the conversation view was open when the phone went to sleep
Posted by Adam K at 10:07 PM
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5 comments:

  1. i love smspopup one of the best apps on the market but it's just 1 more bug i wouldn't say bug but fix you should do when im typing to a person and the same person sends a message at the sametime as im typing to them when i press reply the cursor restarts to the beginning
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  2. Very nice improvements. There still seems to be one issue (form me at least). When the message window is displayed (where I can read and type messages), if I receive a message during that time, the notification still displays in the notification bar. I would assume that once I start typing or at least hit "Send" it would remove that notification. The Delete and Reply buttons removed the notification perfectly. It's just that when I actually have the message displayed and a new message comes it, I have to go up to the notification bar and click "Clear Notifications".

    Anyway, great app! TTS seems to work well for me. Maybe in a next release have an option to automatically read the text, or a least a clickable button. That would greatly reduce the number of steps to takes to get the message read. I know it's a testing thing right now so you just put it out there for that reason.
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  3. daqwan, unfortunately this functionality is controlled by the system SMS app - I know this isn't ideal. As a workaround, you can use the "restrict popup" option so that it doesn't show a popup (just notification) when a message comes in (thus it won't reset the cursor in the SMS app).

    Tristan, thanks for the feedback. The reason I haven't fixed this is because there isn't a great way to detect if a user is writing a new message. The only solution is to create an always-running service that monitors the database - when it sees a message go out, it can remove the notification. I have been trying to avoid doing this as it uses more memory all the time. I may add it as an option in a future version.

    As for TTS, if people think it works ok and is useful, I'll add a bunch of options in a future version :)
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  4. Most useful app I have found for my G1 so far. I like the addition of TTS however having to press and hold the screen then select TTS to have your message read out seems to defeat the object of text-to-speech! Would it be possible to have an option to have the message read out automatically when it is received? Like on Windows Mobile with Microsoft Voice Command.
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  5. @Mark, Yep I am working on adding more options for TTS such as something that will auto-read the sender and message. I kept TTS in the long-press menu to start with just to test the feature to see if people liked it :)
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