As I said earlier the mobile phone coverage at my workplace is very poor despite being so close to the centre of Copenhagen. Here’s an example of just how poor it can be, 22% of the time I’ve had no coverage at all in a 6 hour period at work.
I just added the AddToAny links on my blog but could see that it gave a parsing error when I tried to use the Google +1 button.
Having looked at the code it’s easy to see the error, in line 371 the code says this:
'https://plusone.google.com/u/0/_/%2B1/button#url=' . $linkurl_enc . '&size=medium&count='
Whereas the ampersands should be encoded as & (as they are in all the other services), just change the line to read this and all is well.
'https://plusone.google.com/u/0/_/%2B1/button#url=' . $linkurl_enc . '&size=medium&count='
Update – I entered the bug onto the forum and the developer responded within a few hours saying it will be fixed for the next release. It’s nice when a developer is so responsive.
Here’s the forum thread.
The mobile operator 3 Denmark that I’m with have released a speedtest based on Ookla to ‘show just how good their network is’, in their words.
I installed it and tried it out, here’s the results from my office at work. I should mention that I work a few km’s from the centre of Copenhagen but the coverage is useless. I’m usually on an edge network and sometimes my phone shows as roaming because the signal from Sweden is stronger. Some days when I go home I can see that I’ve had no signal for 20-30% of the day!
My app links to Google Maps navigation by sending the start and end points to Google Maps using ther following code.
String directions="http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr="+startlatitude+","+startlongitude+
"&daddr="+endLatitude+","+endLongitude;
Intent intent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
intent.setData(Uri.parse(directions));
This works fine and launches Google Maps. However I had another intent that was launching without knowing the current location. I wanted Google Maps to get the location for me but couldn’t work out how to force Maps to use my location as the start point.
As it turns out the solution was obvious, if you dont send the start address parameter Maps assumes you mean from the current location so the code becomes this.
String directions="http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr="+endLatitude+","+endLongitude;
Intent intent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
intent.setData(Uri.parse(directions));
This opens Google Maps with ‘My location’ listed as the start point so you have to then press the ‘Go’ button but saves me the effort of getting the location first.
Looked around the new HTC concept store in Copenhagen yesterday. It’s a small store but it was still nice to be able to look at the new phones especially when many phone operator shops only have non working dummies.
Looked at the the HTC Incredible S and have to admit it’s very well put together and the build quality is great.
Still I’m happy with my Desire and I’ll wait until the next generation of phones with qHD displays come out.
I uploaded my test Android App to my website but found that the server was just treating the file as plain text so it just appeared in the browser as a regular page.
To force the app to download through a browser was very easy, just edit your .htaccess file to add the following line (assuming you use Apache of course).
AddType application/vnd.android.package-archive apk
Now the phone browser will force a file download so it can be installed by the app installer, easy.
After writing about this problem and seeing that the fix I thought worked didn’t really, I decided to return my Desire to 3 Denmark to be fixed.
It could well be that I could have fixed it myself but since the phone was under warranty I didn’t see the point.
It could take up to three weeks to fix but at least they lent me a phone to use in the meantime. It’s a Sony Xperia X8 mini and takes a bit of getting used to after using my Desire. Typing on a 2.6″ screen was very difficult but installing the Swype beta made life much better. I also did them a favour by upgrading the phone to Android 2.1 since it came with Android 1.6 installed.
At least I got to test my own App on the phone running 1.6 and it worked perfectly.
I ran into this issue months ago writing my Android app and it’s hard to believe it doesn’t catch everyone at some point. Basically if you set a ListPreserence to use interger-array then you have to retrieve the data as a string or you get a runtime crash.
Like many of the commenters I wasted many hours on this before I found the bug tracker. Again it’s the small details that need fixing as well as the big new features in 2.3 and 2.4.
See the bug report on Google Code.
It’s a minor issue but in the new Market the comments section uses yellow stars shown here.
After clicking on ‘More’ to view all the comments the display changes to green stars.
It’s small things like this that give the UI an inconsistent look. It may be a very minor issue and does not affect usability in any way but it’s the small stuff that needs fixing if they want to compete head on with Apple and iOS.
My Desire is 6 months old, not rooted and has Android 2.2 installed. Just recently the proximity sensor has issues, it seems that it only detects very bright light so is useless indoors (or in grey Danish winter).
Basically the sensor should detect when I make a call and hold the phone to my ear and then turn off the screen, it should turn back on when I remove it from my ear.
In reality as soon as I start a call the screen goes blank and it never turns back on. I’m unable to hang up the call or press any buttons during the call. Only after the call is ended by the other party does the screen turn back on, and then it takes about a minutes after the call ends to do this.
If I insert the charger, headphone jack or hold the phone to a very bright lamp the screen turns on so it seems to be a software issue as the sensor does work, it’s just the sensitivity is totally out of calibration.
I contacted HTC who suggested a hard reset, which I did, but the problem still exists so after the New Year I think I’ll have to send it for repair.
It’s a shame, I really like the phone but this issue makes it useless for phone calls right now.
The issue seems to affect a few people and there’s a thread on the HTC community forum.
Update – I found a stupidly easy fix. Just blow between the screen and the ear piece. It looks like there is no gap but it blows dust out of the sensor. HTC needs to seal the screen better to stop this.
The fix came from this tweet.