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

7 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

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
  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 :)

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
  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 :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. hey adam, is there a way that the tts will work without clicking on the screen to select it after a long press?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Peidey - you can add it as a dedicated button if you use it a lot. Under Additional Settings -> Button Config. Otherwise long press is the only other way.

    ReplyDelete