Monday, June 7, 2010

Froyo update notes

Update 7/5/10--- Due to the changes in froyo that close security holes in the lockscreen that had allowed apps to toggle off security or close the lockscreen from a transparent window, there is no telling what more will be done that further destroys the capability of interacting with the lockscreen via SDK apps. There has been talk of deprecation of the pre-2.0 keyguard interaction API, among other details that have come down directly from the android developers.

Though with the release of eclair things seemed to be getting better and better for lockscreen apps, the android development team has continued to refuse to implement much-needed enhancements to the lockscreen interaction methods and instead with android 2.2 are reducing their usefulness and versatility for use within SDK just to fit internal (Google) app functionality needs.

myLock will not progress any further until the android team chooses to finish the missing componenents that will allow smooth lockscreen substitution and security/power mediation. They are deliberately avoiding doing so and treating what's been implemented as an internal tool to help the phone and alarm/dock apps have more features.

myLock for eclair, release 1.5, is the final official release. It will include idle lock (one of the main things we lost in the update to 2.2). In the market it will be available for $0.99. You'll still be able to download any older version built on 2.0 for free on the project page.

Until android team decides it is worth it to finish the unimplemented elements of lockscreen substitution, I am done trying to force it to work and troubleshooting the nuances that occur with the various cases of lockscreen control. I don't have any new features planned, having lost plenty of features that took a long time to stabilize.

What this means is that I will not be officially supporting myLock on Froyo. I will make the test build that I've been running on the leaked droid 2.2 available to my donators via the market donate package.

Please contact me if you manually donated prior to our launch in the market and I will send you the apk and keep you on the list for updates. I'd like to put the root-version alpha in your hands first as soon as it is available. I am not sure how soon I might begin work on this root version but it will likely be sooner than android decides to bring lockscreen substitution to the SDK properly.

Read about it at the official issue report we opened when the 2.2 sdk was first released- Android team has no plans to provide the tools yet needed to allow lockscreen superseding windows to return control to the lockscreen or unlock when needed