Database Info

[APP] App Stats (for developers)

App Stats is an Android developer tool which allows you to check application stats and comments from one place. App Stats keeps you informed by notifying you when new information is available such as a new rating or additional comments. The lite version allows you to monitor up to three applications and includes advertisements while the pro version allows for essentially unlimited monitoring and is of course ad free.
Update to Pro (v1.3.0)
Now has a desktop widget =)
Update to Pro (v1.2.0)
Some developers may have a lot of apps to manage stats on such as games with lots of addon content or maybe live wall paper apps, etc. To help alleviate scrolling through a long list of apps, we have added in the ability to label apps and filter the apps list with these labels.
Also, you will find that you can now set per application notification settings. This lets you control when an app update notification is fired so you can now choose specific items to be notified about.
Notes
On certain devices you may not be able to see all of your apps without having root on your device. It is also important to note that if you can not see your app in the market on your device there is no way this app can circumvent that.
If you have any questions, comments or bug reports please contact me here or via our developer email which can be found on the market. (toxicbakery at gmail)
To download, use the attached image or search 'App Stats' on the market and we should be the first two results for pro and lite versions.
Known Issues
- Certain languages may no be available in comments, if you find one please let me know
Upcoming Features
- More graphing options
- Backup search against an app database to find missing data
- Have a feature request? Let me know what you want!
Need another feature? Just ask =)

I love it. But I think that $5 is a bit too much for the full version. I would have gladly paid $2 or $3 even, but anything more takes it out of impulse buy for me.
Don't think I'm bashing your choice, as a dev I understand your need to make money from it, but sometimes the sales you lose from a higher price are worth more than the extra couple dollars you'll make from the higher price.

Thanks for the input! I would have to agree with you that currently $5 dollars is on the high end of price however with the additional features we are working on we feel that it will be a fair price very soon. Depending on what features we end up being able to incorporate we may adjust the pricing.
We almost have the plugin finished that will assist in grabbing your market android id from tcpdump and once we perfect that then it will be possible to search 2.2 apps and copy protected apps when using legit android devices that are rooted. Once this is complete we will have the only app on the market that I know which can essentially hands free get all the needed info to make a 'true' market request that lets you see all applications. This is how sites like androidzoom and like function. Without this additional parameter other apps are limited to 2.1 and less non copy protected applications by design of the market itself.
After that we will be working on letting you attach admob accounts to your apps and possibly google checkout however google checkout looks iffy due to its seeming lack of being able to pull useful information such as 'total sales' etc.
That said, thanks again for the input and if you need help please email me at our developer email for fastest response.
-Ian

One thing that's highly annoying for an application which is not a game, a navigation system, or a media application: Asking for the fullscreen window feature.
Please consider removing it... I don't really see any need for it, and it just breaks the transitions between activities anyway (when you're not making the design consistent). Thank you.
Anyway, once polished up and the bugs cleared up, looks like a useful app

Thank you for the input! We removed the full screen requests on the detailed view and graphs view.
I'm unfortunately out of town currently however either tonight or tomorrow we will be releasing an update that adds in the functionality to search 2.2 and copy protected apps if you have a rooted device. This should alleviate the complaints some people have had about it not finding their apps.
Unfortunately right now having a rooted phone is the only way get the market key we need to make these 'fully enabled' searches due to how the market works currently. The other option is having users use TCP dump to grab the needed packet and then proceed manually with decoding it and running it though protobuf to get the key out.
A few other fixes and tweaks have also been put in place and after we release the updates the Pro version will be available again as we removed it due to a major bug in the licensing we didn't catch before.
Please keep the comments coming! If you don't like something feel free to post it or email us and we will do whatever we can to improve it.
Thank you again to everyone that has voiced their opinion, every bit helps!

Finally got the new version released!
To see copy protected or 2.2 only applications you will need to have a root phone that can already see those apps on the market. For example a 2.1 phone can't see 2.2 applications no matter what you do and theres no way to code around this, sorry.
Once installed, hit menu from the main screen and select settings. Simply hit the "Load Key" Button at the very top and hopefully after a few seconds a Toast should show up saying that the operation was a success.
I know for a fact this wont work on all phones. We tested it to work on a Droid and it works on a G1 with Cyanogen 2.2 rom however it will not work on an Eris. That said I'm sure it will fail to work on other phones but I will be working on figuring out the fix asap. If you are one of the unlucky ones with a phone that doesn't work, please email me or message me here and I will do whatever I can to get you setup!

New version is now out and good news! It appears, on our end, that root is no longer necessary to get copy protected and 2.2 applications. This change is still too new to confirm it works on all devices so please send us feedback on if you can see all of your applications without using the root feature.
As always please feel free to leave feedback!

New version released that will hopefully allow more users to successfully find all of their apps with less hassle. Also a few misc bug fixes and FC issues have been resolved.

Update to pro version released, main post updated.

Released new versions of lite and pro, updated main post.

About App Stats and its development
I am from Mobile application Development company in Singapore. I would like share this stats, today more users are available in through mobile apps. and mobile developments also increasing day by day. So this growth of development is lead the business strategy. Know from our Mobile app development how its useful for business environment.

[Q] Becoming a Windows Phone App Developer

Hello,
i am completely new to all this app development, having a windows phone 7 i have took interest in building and creating an app. however i have no idea where to start, so i was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to guide me in the right direction please?
for e.g.
which software should i use
what coding language is used to write the app etc
i already know moderate levels of coding, such as VBA, PHP, HTML etc i know quite abit of these
i am literally starting from the beggining so i would need all the help i can get
Thank you

You will be using either the C# or the Visual Basic .NET language. Personally I recommend using C# because using VB.NET requires that you have the profession version of Visual Studio, which can retail at about $1,000. To download the FREE Windows Phone version, download at http://create.msdn.com. This website, also called App Hub has all the info you need. If you are learning C# from the beginning, check out some videos Microsoft's Channel 9 Website. There are code samples all over the place. The best place to look for resources is the App Hub website.
Also, it will cost you $99 to register, unless you are a student. In that case, look here: http://dreamspark.com.
Good luck, and if this helped, please hit the thanks button.
Thanks,
John Simmons
SimzzDev Lead Developer
http://simzz.com

thanks for your reply,
however no thanks, as it was no use because first of all i'm from the UK and NOT from the US...
this is not enough information for me especially since i know nothing about what your talking about, how do you expect me to pay for something i know nothing of..?
and ive been to that site before, however i need a deeper explanation exactly where to start.. as i am very confused

This link http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-Phone-7-Development-for-Absolute-Beginners is probably what you're looking for.

You may start by watching this video

Like SimzzDev said, you will have to develop in either C# or VB but I also recommend C#.
The tools you need are available for free. You will not need Visual Studio 2010 Professional. You can find the free Developer Tools here.
They contain the Visual Studio version you need and the emulator.
There are tools for 7.0 and 7.1. 7.0 is the current version and you could make apps with these tools for devices that are out now.
7.1 is for Mango which will come in September.
Until now, everything is free.
However, there are two things that will cost you money:
1) using your apps on your own phone
2) releasing the apps on the windows phone marketplace.
Unless you are a student, in which case both things will be free.
As a student you can use DreamSpark to get access to a lot of MS software including the ability to release apps to the Windows Phone Marketplace. It does not really matter where you com from.
If you cannot find your school or college or univercity you can also contact support and make sure you are able to verify you go to a school/univercity.
If you are not a student you will have to pay 99$/year.
This will allow you to run your own apps on your phone and release apps to the Windows Phone Marketplace (100 free apps per year + unlimited paid apps per year).

If I'm from a country where Marketplace is not available/supported, can I still develop apps for WP7? Will I get my payment and ad revenue?

UranusHertz said:
If I'm from a country where Marketplace is not available/supported, can I still develop apps for WP7? Will I get my payment and ad revenue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm in the same situation - no official Taiwanese app store yet.
Can I still write apps and release them in other territories?

"Block This" - Looking for Devs to help in improving the app

Hi guys! I'll try to keep it short. I've developed an app called "Block This" for Android. It's essentially an ad blocker based on VPN/DNS. I manage my own DNS servers + the development of the Android app.
I'm not gonna lie, there's a lot of bugs arising and basically no money involved as the app is currently FREE to use. I do think its a great app though, and I want to see it grow and spread over other systems like iOS & Windows with time. The app currently has about 50 000 active users (they were a lot more but the app got removed from the Play Store so distribution is harder now).
With this thread I basically want to check whether people would be interesting in devoting some time and helping me on this project if I decide to open source it.
If you are a dev and think this could be an interesting side project for you please drop in a few works down below. Thanks!
Kind Regards,
Sava Georgiev
Official website: https://block-this.com
Forum: https://forum.block-this.com
My site: https://savageorgiev.com
XDA thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/s7-edge/themes/block-ad-blocker-root-t3338098

I have been using the app for a few weeks now.
This is a good app that has some promise. It works well against several of the well known ad SDKs. Especially if you are using the free version of TuneIn. I've not had time to test it fully, but so far, I like it. It could also be developed into a no-root firewall app. That could help it get back into playstore. But going open source, it would be a good fit for f-droid. And of course, here at XDA.

Looks like a good application. I have not tried it yet. But will try on my phone ( Note 2 - Cyanogenmod 12 )

New information ! The developer has now taken the project Open Source. Here is the link : https://github.com/ggsava/block-this

On my xt897 running CM12.1, my battery lasts soooooooooo much longer with this app. :laugh::good:

Great app @ggsava, I'm using this app on my non rooted galaxy note 7 and so far so good.

I try your apps, seems your vpn from france,my traffic route to server in france. It's it save and secure?

izamd said:
I try your apps, seems your vpn from france,my traffic route to server in france. It's it save and secure?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is as safe and secure as possible - those are things I care about the most personally as well. You are however right, currently there are only servers available in France, but I'm starting to rework the back-end soon and will start adding more power to the DNS servers, making them available closer to people's locations. The plan is to have a couple of servers across Europe, NA and Asia in order to ensure maximum speed.

Looking good, Will try this app

How long should we keep supporting Kitkat in our Apps?

Hey Developers, I am interested in your opinions.
I have an app published on Google Play. Its minSDK currently is set to API 16, which is Android 4.1. To ensure compatibility, I left off some of newer design features that are not included in the androidx packages. In the past few days, I read about some apps that are dropping their support for Android Kitkat with API 19. I personally have been looking forward to this for a few months now, knowing that I can get rid of ensuring compatibility with these old devices, as there several times were unexpected problems, and my testing capacities are quite limited.
I checked out my Developer Console to see how the Android versions of my app users are distributed, and the installations on devices with Android from API 16 to API 19 in the past 180 days made 8% of the total installations number. As I am rather new to app development, I'm highly interested about your opinions, how long I should keep supporting pre Lollipop Android?
Regarding monetarization, I use in app purchases. So only a small amount of the users pays for the app.
Thanks in advance!

Why isn't there custom opensource bootloaders like custom recoveries for android phones ?

This may be stupid, but I couldn't find any resources regarding this. We have custom recoveries for android devices but why isn't there custom bootloaders like there is for PCs ? Like in the PC space we have the likes of reFind and gnu grub.
Thanks

There are some instances of alternate bootloader projects. Just that they are not popular,
[Bootloader] LK for Xperia T
LK for Xperia T LT30p Only - Unlocked Bootloader Required WARNING 1: This modification makes changes to the devices partition table. I (lilstevie) am not responsible for any damage to your device or data loss that may occur. WARNING 2: ICS...
forum.xda-developers.com
EFIDroid
EFIDroid is a easy to use, powerful 2ndstage-bootloader based on EDKII(UEFI). It can be installed one-click with the EFIDroidManager app. You can add/remove/edit multiboot ROM's. There's no special support needed by ROM's or RecoveryTools(no...
forum.xda-developers.com
The developer of EFIdroid stopped developing in 2019.
efidroid on Android 9 and 10 devices ? · Issue #152 · efidroid/projectmanagement
Hi, I just want to know if efidroid supports devices with 6 GB RAM and 64/128 GB Storage devices running Android 9 and Android 10 ? thanks.
github.com

Not to mention you would need OEM's to cooperate....

Thanks @karandpr for that github comment a lot of info there. Thanks @galaxys too. So a quick summary would be that the reason is that for the bootloader to work smoothly there has to be support from the kernel too, which the OEMs should do and probably would not. But I didn't think about the support in the kernel was an issue. That does seem to be a lot of work and I see the reason now.

al_l_en said:
Thanks @karandpr for that github comment a lot of info there. Thanks @galaxys too. So a quick summary would be that the reason is that for the bootloader to work smoothly there has to be support from the kernel too, which the OEMs should do and probably would not. But I didn't think about the support in the kernel was an issue. That does seem to be a lot of work and I see the reason now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think Google intends to open up android anymore. They want restrictions like iOS but pretend to be open source for the "goodwill". What's the use of AOSP if you cant effectively install it on a device or your important apps don't work?
I believe PinePhones are the ones that can have truly open-source compatible hardware. The specs are underwhelming but the community is really good.
You can get spares easily and the battery is removable.
Only thing is they are mostly out of stock.

karandpr said:
I don't think Google intends to open up android anymore. They want restrictions like iOS but pretend to be open source for the "goodwill". What's the use of AOSP if you cant effectively install it on a device or your important apps don't work?
I believe PinePhones are the ones that can have truly open-source compatible hardware. The specs are underwhelming but the community is really good.
You can get spares easily and the battery is removable.
Only thing is they are mostly out of stock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah those are great but the problem is that they are not usable for "normies" which will prevent mass adoption and hence cannot have a sustainable business model.
But I think google is not the only one to blame, like couldn't the OEMs actually provide bootloaders that can boot signed os images. Or is there any technical or security difficuties in doing that.

al_l_en said:
Yeah those are great but the problem is that they are not usable for "normies" which will prevent mass adoption and hence cannot have a sustainable business model.
But I think google is not the only one to blame, like couldn't the OEMs actually provide bootloaders that can boot signed os images. Or is there any technical or security difficuties in doing that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Normies are afraid to change the default browser, so bootloader is really out of their leagues.
Phone tinkering is a hobby, not a necessity. Phone tinkering itself is not a sustainable model.
Google is to blame primarily. Because they have a stringent list of requirements for devices to pass CTS. You can read the bootloader requirement and judge yourself.
Android 11 Compatibility Definition | Android Open Source Project
source.android.com
Without passing CTS, devices cannot use Google apps, they cannot get push notifications and they cannot pass SafetyNet checks used by most banking apps.
At the end of the day do I want to spend 100s of hours to bring a feature to an android phone which will probably be used by 10 users and deprecated by the time I finish doing it?
or do I want to buy a phone which will allow me to tinker freely in a community and ecosystem which allows modification?
For our tinkering pleasures, Pinephone is the way to go for now. They have support from Manjaro, Debian and KDE. Which is a big thing IMO.
Or else there you can roll your thing in RaspberryPi?

While going through related details I found an article about google probably switching to hardware based safetynet checks which could be ending google play compatibility on custom roms.
It really seems like google is using security as an excuse to make sure that there are no competitors in their business space.
Maybe this is because I have been only doing web development and only started learning app dev, but the reasons google use for CTS like for enforcing DRM, is also handled on websites while allowing openness and being neutral (or maybe the web is not as secure as something like this, so forgive me if I am wrong). Android could really take pages off the web ecosystem for being a neutral platform.
I really appreciate the patience for hearing out and also the references(and the rabbit holes that it was followed by) really taught me a lot about general android architecture.

al_l_en said:
While going through related details I found an article about google probably switching to hardware based safetynet checks which could be ending google play compatibility on custom roms.
It really seems like google is using security as an excuse to make sure that there are no competitors in their business space.
Maybe this is because I have been only doing web development and only started learning app dev, but the reasons google use for CTS like for enforcing DRM, is also handled on websites while allowing openness and being neutral (or maybe the web is not as secure as something like this, so forgive me if I am wrong). Android could really take pages off the web ecosystem for being a neutral platform.
I really appreciate the patience for hearing out and also the references(and the rabbit holes that it was followed by) really taught me a lot about general android architecture.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Theoretically, Google can end GPlay compatibility on Custom ROMs anytime they wish. It's just that lot of App Developers don't use SafetyNet the way it is intended and Google doesn't roll out its strict check. They do it once in a while.
They don't have any competitors in their business space. It's a very well-thought monopoly.
CTS restricts Google Play API access to vendor operating systems. So vendors like Samsung, OnePlus and others have to play by their rules. IIRC, the cost of Play API is around 15$ per device but it is subsidized for large quantities.
End users don't really care about Play API. But App Developers do.
Without Play services, there is no easy way to integrate push notifications, ads, maps, analytics, metrics, and so on. Rolling your own thing will take years to develop and won't work as seamlessly as the play service counterparts.
I don't think Google will ever cede their monetary interests for open collaboration.

karandpr said:
I don't think Google will ever cede their monetary interests for open collaboration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that's for sure. The only way this monopoly can break is when an opensource alternative to google play services and other apis exist and while doing that it must be compatible with the existing google apis. And that is probably not going to happen in a long time. Although microg does solve this to some extent, but still it is a second citizen.
Some of the functionality is already there, like most of the google apps like docs and drive could replaced by nextcloud and then maps could be replaced by osmand. If some company, preferably an OEM, comes and integrates all of these into a package maybe there's hope. I think /e/ os tries to do this to some extent.

You might find this resource useful. As they have gone over a comprehensive set of bootloader software and tried to outline their primary features in detail. Hopefully, you’ll be able to determine the best one for your use case. https://www.ubuntupit.com/best-linux-bootloader-for-home-and-embedded-systems/