Friday, November 20, 2009

SMS Popup v1.0.5 out now (a few minor updates)

Here's another small update, nothing too major in this one. Hopefully v1 of the app should be stable now for most users so I'll start slowing down releases and start working on some newer features again so stay tuned!

SMS Popup icon
SMS Popup v1.0.5

  • Added Android OS Text-to-speech engine (for devices on Donut and above)
  • Switched regular Reply back to using threadId to reply (this should fix issues on devices like the Hero and Cliq where you would be unable to see previous messages in the thread). For users who want to trigger the old Reply you can switch it back in the Button Configuration, its called "Reply (to phone number)" - the only major use I've found for this is if you want Google Voice to trigger when clicking the Reply button.
  • Blur background option has now been removed (was causing massive slowdown on some devices)
  • Bug fixes as usual

21 comments:

  1. Motorola Droid

    one thing i've noticed is that when having the phone horizontal and receiving a text then flipping vertically the notification box isn't properly formatted. (it appears to keep the formatting of horizontal mode)

    other than that great app! thank you so much!!!

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  2. Noooooo, I loved blurred background :(. Even without the option being chosen it was casing the slowdown still?

    Thanks so much for fixing the reply problem <3.

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  3. Adam,

    I love the app and I've been running it since I've had my G1 last year. I've noticed with the last few updates, when I receive an SMS, SMS Popup doesn't show the Contact Name/Photo, just the phone number. Even though the contact is definitely in my database. Not sure where to start for troubleshooting.

    Thanks,
    Larry

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  4. Ah thats something I can vouch for what Larry said. Since getting SMS Popup, i'm yet to have any photos being displayed on incoming sms, just contact name.

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  5. Hi guys, for any issues please add them to the bug tracker (if they don't already exist):
    http://code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/issues/entry

    will: some other people have reported this as well, I can't reproduce myself and the code is supposed to handle resizes upon rotation. add a bug if possible.

    Martyn: i liked the blur too, but it was causing problems and disabling it also speeds things up (and a lot of people complain of things moving slowly as it is).

    Larry/Martyn: that's strange! fetching the contact photo is a little complicated now as various phones and OS versions store the photo in different ways, however I thought I'd found and fixed all the outstanding issues. please throw a bug in the issue tracker if possible. are you both running Droid's? note that it won't display facebook photos quite yet ... just local contacts and gmail contacts.

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  6. I'm running a Cliq/DEXT. If it only displays facebook photos that makes sense because the Cliq/DEXT's local contacts are linked with a facebook account which creates the photos in the phonebook entries.

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  7. You can also get apps (both for desktop and Android) that sync FB photos to your Gmail contacts which is also a good workaround. I use SyncMyPix from Market to do this and it works well (plus the added bonus is I get the photos in my web-based Gmail on my desktop).

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  8. Hi Adam, great app! sTill have the issue with my T-mobile HTC Hero: I only see the phone number but not the contact name for incoming messages: any suggestion?
    Thank you :-)

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. Mmm, that SyncMyPix app wasn't too great for me. I first used the smart feature which just imported a load of incorrect photos for contacts then without it pics basically nothing up. Do you know of any other decent apps out there for this purpose Adam?

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  11. I emailed you, but your autoresponse made me believe it's at the end of a very long backlog of unread email---

    I have noticed that your app does not provide a preview that users can see on the keyguard screen. I noticed when a message first comes, you are forcing it out of lock into a kind of custom keyguard where your preview is able to be accessed, but after that you cannot see it till you unlock.

    I am working on a project design which will provide a custom keyguard screen capable of showing any received messages in a timeline. It will integrate content from different types of notifications, not just SMS, and I think your program's overall functionality can benefit from this kind of lockscreen preview.

    The reason I am contacting you is that I have little experience on android, so I was wondering if you would like collaborate. Once I get the custom keyguard functionality baseline implemented, it should be very easy to share the code for that object so your program can make use of it, allowing your previews to exist on the keyguard when a user wakes the screen to check their waiting messages. The convenience factor is great, I think that's your app's root goal as well, so I think a collaboration would be a great benefit to all end users.

    Your project is one of the first I've come across that is also going for free & open source, so you seem like an ideal candidate for collaboration. I've contacted many other developers but received no responses. I have a lot of experience with object oriented programming and javascript based languages, so I am currently just trying to get familiar with android and figure out how to implement this functionality. A few apps such as flyscreen and lock 2.0 already implement custom keyguard screens, they just do functionally nothing for the end user looking for more convenience and control of their messages, so I know it can be done and I am just working on discovering how to code it from a very basic functionality perspective. I've been looking over some of your code as well as it seems to be a good starting point for some of the ultimate goals of my project.

    Let me know if any of this is getting the wheels spinning with you.

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  12. m: I wasn't aware of that bug, are you sync'ing with Gmail contacts? You can file a bug at the Google code site which will help us track the issue (code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/)

    Martyn: There used to be one called "Facebook Sync" that worked really well but I think that might be broken since Donut came out :( There are also some non-Android ones if you google around (which will end up being sync'd back to your phone anyway).

    ian: just responded to your email.

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  13. When the popup switches to horizontal mode on my HTC Hero it crashes the entire system if the home screen is behind, as the home screen is not designed to go horizontal...

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  14. Thanks dude. I replied to you earlier today and got the autoreply again.. and I later realized I can take this thing in 2 directions, one to help you and your Apps goal (lockscreen replacement for users who want to have it) and one that borrows your convention of skipping the keyguard to display our functionality, on a more long-term basis. This ends up making more sense with my ideas instead of a keyguard modification just get rid of the keyguard and present my features on a new homescreen or else just through widgets. i should be able to figure this out from your source as i start attempting to build my alpha

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  15. A question about the "Cancel" button. When I hit cancel, i have "mark message as read when I hit cancel" -- but the phones alert is still there. Is it possible to have the alert go away as well?

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  16. @Steve: yes this is a known issue and really a problem with the HTC home screen not working with auto-rotate correctly. However as a fix I can make auto-rotate an option so HTC Sense users can avoid this crash.

    @i4n: will reply to your email now.

    @Izzmit: I gather you mean the "Close" button? See here -
    http://code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/wiki/FAQ#The_notification_icon_doesn't_seem_to_go_away_when_I_delete

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  17. Is there a way so that when the message pops up and hit reply or quick reply it disables the phone lock? Please email me at samuel.levy@yahoo.com. thanks a lot. Love this ap otherwise. I just find it annoying to have to unlock the phone first.

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  18. Ive got an issue on my nexus one. It seems that when you close it does not mark the message as read even when checked in the options.

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  19. @Sam: quick reply should work without having to disable the phone lock. regular reply will still require unlocking as otherwise could get access to your phone without unlocking.

    @New Wildlife: if you mean the notification icon doesn't go away see here:
    http://code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/wiki/FAQ#The_notification_icon_doesn't_seem_to_go_away_when_I_use_Qu

    Otherwise SMS Popup should mark the actual message in your messaging app as 'read'.

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  20. wow amazing app. just what i was looking for.
    i only used those chompsms and handscent cuz of their pop up feature. with this app i dont need those because they are sooo slow.
    love this app.
    only thing i wanna see in future updates is to be able to scroll through multiple recieved messages instead of only one.

    keep up the good work.

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  21. rizocreations: thanks! and don't worry, we're working on supporting multiple messages properly in a future release.

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