Be Excellent To Each Other

Awesome, Joans to the rescue again!! Cheers bud!

SORTED! Cheers mate

Apparently you can get some free apps if you're on T-Mobile and have registered on their website
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/20-free-android-app-for-existing-customers-t-mobile-1076815

It says they are for newer customers only, but they've approved them for me no problem.

"Sorry we are unable to verify that you are a T-Mobile customer and eligible for the offer"

Fuck right off you useless shower of fucking shits.

I got that, they just asked me to try again using my 3g instead of wireless, it worked then.

I was on 3g. T-Mobile have never liked the fact that I brought my number with me from Vodafone. Thinking on, it was originally an Orange number anyway.

How strange, my number is originally from Orange too.

Mine's from Vodafone as well, can't you just go through the website? Presumably they'd know if you were a customer or not.
Having said that I haven't bought anything yet, so maybe it won't work for me either.

Got it working now, had to do a forced sync with Google.

It's pretty useful!

https://market.android.com/details?id=a ... ure=banner

For the next 10 days, 10 different apps per day will be 10p! In celebration of 10 billion apps having been downloaded at the Market, or something.

If you haven't tried SwiftKey X Keyboard yet then it's a no-brainer for 10p, easily the best Android keyboard I've used so far!

That's pretty cool; app selection depending of course. I already got Asphalt 6 free with some Samsung promo for GSII owners but it's an excellent arcade racer and well worth 10p.

Pro-tip: select the 'on screen steering wheel' control option and then just think of it as an analogue joystick and it works a treat.

Great Little War Game is good, been playing it a bit this month. I just bought SoundHound as, well... it's 10p init, why the hell not?!?!

I've already got Shazam installed, is SoundHound any better? Not that the price is a barrier as you say but no point having duplicate apps installed I suppose.

Supposedly soundhound is a little better at finding independent music than shazam, but I more just felt the need to buy something :-)

As an endorsement, that's the keyboard I use. It's Bruno Good.

Yeah cheers for mentioning this Pupil, I wasn't previously aware of it but I grabbed it last night and it is indeed excellent, especially useful for my Wildfire with its tiny screen, typing was a right faff before.

Swype is the bestest keyboard I have used.

I've never bought anything off the market, how does it charge, do I need to associate a CC, or does it come off my phone bill, or what?

You normally have to associate a card payment with it or if you use Google checkout, you can use that.

A encl e clement to se e if it's any better then my curt keyboard wert being regale output

That would be a no then

I don't suppose you can get the Android market to work in the same way as Steam in that you can buy stuff and then install at your leisure at a later date? I was hoping to buy Minecraft but it's not compatible with my current phone.

If you type in the manner of a whirling dervish you will never find a keyboard that works properly. More haste, less speed!

Yeah, if you don't download/install the app within a couple hours then Google refunds your purchase, or at least that's the experience I've had.

So, probably no then...

The problem is that the Market website won't let you click the Install button if it knows the app in question isn't compatible with your handset so you're be blocked right from the outset.

Only just got round to this, and after doing the "we can't tell if you're a T-Mobile customer because you're on wifi, we still can't tell if you're a T-Mobile customer, oh wait, now we can, and you are" dance, the selection of apps isn't particularly inspiring, and none of the ones I've downloaded want to install on my phone. Hooray.

Oh, and they're not proper market downloads, just links to the apk files, so you're not eligible for any updates.

This on the other hand, is a fantastic deal. I've already snapped up SwiftKey and Soundhound, although I'm not familiar with much of the other stuff. I think I might have had a look at Paper Camera before, so I'll take another look at that. Can't really go wrong for 10p.

The selection hasn't upated since yesterday though, I thought the apps in the promotion were supposed to change every day?

As Bamba has already said, your main hurdle here is being able to buy it in the first place. It's certainly a bit annoying when an offer comes along for something you might want to use in the future, but you don't have a device that can run it at the moment. I wonder how many people take advantage of the offers on iTunes for apps that they might want to run when they get an iPad, or upgrade their phone (assuming that iTunes lets buy stuff without any issue). Even worse is when an app says it's incompatible, but if you install it through other means, you find it works perfectly well. Sometimes it's like Google doesn't want your money (or doesn't want the devs to get theirs).

Anyway, if you can get it installed, then it's yours to keep and install on any Android devices you're signed into (assuming they're compatible), so you'll just have to work out how to actually buy it (and if what Pupil has said about automatic refunds, you might have to play it a bit as well).

I think your options are:
1. Steal it. It's only 10p anyway, and they're not letting you buy it, so what else are you supposed to do?
2. Get someone else to buy it, and send you the apk. This is a rubbish idea, as they'd have to send you a new file when it was updated (and keep it installed on their phone so they'd know it had been updated). Technically, this is the same as 1.
3. I have no idea if this would actually work, but, find someone with a compatible device, get them to add your account onto the phone, and then buy the app on their phone.
4. Same as 3, but I'm assuming once you've added your account to another device, it would be listed on the market website as one of your devices, so you could buy it from there (although if you need to play it to prevent it from being automatically refunded, you may as well just do 3).
5. Wait until you get a compatible device and see if you want to pay whatever the going rate is for it then (I realise this isn't very helpful).

But yeah, the market really does need an "I don't care if it's incompatible, I just want to give you my money" button.

When I first read it, I assumed it was going to be 1 app a day for 10 days, but it just looks like all 10 are available. It does make it sound like they're supposed to change though.

From the point of view of the devs this would be opening the doors to a lot more "I bought your app and when I tried to use it it didn't work on my device!" type complaints by idiots who don't know what they're doing though. I imagine there's already a good amount of support issues to wade through with the number of Android devices out there so I suspect this is the lesser of two evils by far.

Well that's why it needs to be an option, rather than just turning off the compatibility checks altogether. As long as the devs know that they're getting support requests from people that ignored the fact that the app is incompatible, then they can just ignore them.

I don't think there should really be any reason for an app to be incompatible with a device apart from screen size, and not being able to run the app at a decent enough speed.
I see your point about devs trying to cut down on support issues though, and I'm not really sure what the best solution is.

Hang on, they've changed now...
Fruit Ninja, Flick Golf, Airsync and Beautiful Widgets are all worth 10p.

Looks like the previous apps are still 10p as well.

Apparently you can install the SDK and purchase apps through the emulator.

There are certain games that have had issues with whatever the gfx chipset is in the SGSII. I mean I don't know how common such issues are I'm just offering it as an example of a miscesllaneous problem that would mean devs wouldn't want a particular app sold to users of a given phone. I'm sure there are other such indivdual niggles and bigger issues I'm not aware of as a non-developer so I'm happy for the decision to be left up to devs in general.

So, the Onlive client is now out for Android. It's aimed at tablets but it installed and ran on my SGSII without issue. I gave the demo of that Lara Croft game a brief shot this morning just to test it out and it didn't go well; the stream kept freezing up or artifacting all to shit so you couldn't see what was going on anyway. Bear in mind though that my net connection, although fast to download stuff, jitters to fuck when streaming so this might not be the fault of the app and I'd be curious to hear what other people's experiences were. It's also worth noting that they're released a touch control optimised version of LA Noire to coincide with this launch which is a nice idea. In general this isn't much use to me but for people who don't have a console but have an Android tablet with an HDMI port I could see this being a really good gaming option. They're releasing a proper control pad to go with it so you'd essentially get the same experience as people using Online through their PC or dedicated Onlive box.

Also, if you login to your account via the Android app they add a free full copy of Lego Batman to your account which is nice.

Right, in today's lot of 10p apps we have adw launcher ex! Joans, I'm sure you'll know this, is it a benefit or a good idea to run this version with CM7 instead of the bundled version? I wouldn't mind buying it just for the sake of a bargain, but is it actually worth using? It won't knacker CM7 if I do, will it?

You'll lose the way that ADW Settings is integrated into the settings menu if that bothers you. Some people seem to think that the bundled version lags a bit, whereas the EX version doesn't.

This whole page reminds me why I'll never get an Android phone. It's as complicated and frustrating as gaming on a PC!

hmm, probs not a good idea then, I like the way settings are integrated. Cheers!

You can buy an Android phone and not dick about with it like we do and it'll work perfectly fine out of the box. We're just being geeks who like to tinker (the same as i do with PCs, which is why I prefer using them too).

Glad we could be of service. Are there any other decisions you've already made you'd like us to validate for you?



It's really not. I don't really know what else to say other than that because your post leaves no real opening for discussion here. All I can say, as someone using an Android phone without doing any kind of buggering about with it, is that it's not actually complicated and frustrating.

I don't think I even want to know how app compatibility is worked out anymore, according to the market, several apps are only compatible with my Galaxy S, but not my other Galaxy S (I've only ever owned one).

Puzzle Quest 2, Zookeeper & Chu Chu Rocket are all available to suck up your time.

I don't really know what Google Currents is, and it's not available in this country, so I shall remain ignorant.

Dear Google,

Your entire existence is based on search engines, so why doesn't this even show up in the first page of results when I search for Onlive on the marketplace?

Yes, but when iOS and WP provide arguably better features out of the box and I don't have to worry which apps work with what (by and large), there's not much point. Android is definitely for tinkerers, but I can't be arsed with that. Which is why I'll not get one.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, just stating an opinion. Sorry Bamba if it doesn't concur with your world outlook, but if we all thought the same then life's difficulty setting would probably be set too low.

Ok, I give up. I downloaded the app, signed up and logged in, but no sign of Batman. Now I've had an email telling me I need to sign in to get my free Batman, so I've signed in again, still nothing obvious and searching for it just brings up the paid version. What am I missing?

Edit - Nevermind, they've just sent me another email. I won't bother trying it with the terrible signal I get at work though.

Seems there's a bit of overlap when the new apps are reduced before the old ones go back in price, but not too much of one.

Today's apps are:
Pano - Panorama camera app, few complaints that it needs a data connection to work.
Apparatus - Puzzle game where you have to get a ball into a goal, played this a bit before and you should get at least 10p worth of enjoyment out of it.
SlideIT - Keyboard, never used it, but I've heard good things about it, might give it a try.
The Sims 3 - If you can recreate Sim Beex, this is worth more than 10p
Age of Zombies - Top down shooter, think I've played this.
Kids Connect the Dots - "For 4-7 year olds."
Drop 7 - Another puzzler, well worth 10p.
Season Zen HD - Live Wallpaper
Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD - Er, a racing game
Snowfall Live Wallpaper

Worth spending a bit there.