I was thrilled to receive an e-mail regarding my participation in the Android app beta program earlier today, and installed the app immediately (of course).
To get things started, there’s an issue on the Verizon HTC Thunderbolt 4G running (in my case) the most recent patched release (non-rooted) of stock Android 2.2.1 from HTC/Verizon with HTC Sense v2.00.
This issue also exists on the Verizon HTC Droid Incredible running (in my case) the most recent patched release (rooted) of stock Android 2.2 from HTC/Verizon with HTC Sense v1.00.
On either device (with the phone held upright), the app will open, show the FlightAware logo screen for roughly 2-3 seconds, and then die. No force-close message or anything - it just quits and dumps me back to whatever screen I was on when I launched the app.
*** Message edited to remove previous speculation at to the source of this problem ***
After a few minutes, I figured this one out. The app seems to open smoothly when the Thunderbolt or Incredible are held sideways in landscape view. The app will not open on either device when the device is held upright in the standard fashion. You can, however, open the app sideways and then turn the phone upright and continue to use the app.
Landscape-view screen capture from my Thunderbolt linked below - which also shows the weird data block information that appears when clicking on a flight on the standard blue background map (see other thread for more information on this).
I have exported the log information from each device through the ADB Dalvik Debug Monitor and will be attaching these files in an e-mail message to the address provided in the beta notification message I received earlier today. Hopefully, this will give them something to go by when figuring out why these devices are dying when attempting to open the app with the phones in an upright direction. There are quite a few error lines listed in these logs, so they’ll have plenty to look at.
Ok, I’ve been spending some time this morning with my Thunderbolt to see how it is working out now that we know you have to put the phone in landscape when launcing the application.
For the record, my Thunderbolt is non-rooted, and running the most current update pushed from Verizon/HTC (Android 2.2.1, Kernel Version 2.6.32.21-g0606a3ahtckernel@and18-2).
Launching the application requires the rotation of the screen to the landscape position to open, however once launched in landscape I have no issue turning my phone back to portrait mode. I was able to log in with my FlightAware account, and go to one of my listed airports to review information. For the most part it seemed to work fine a few issues: I noticed some duplication of flight tracks drawn on my screen where if you selected one flight that was duplicated you could then select another aircraft at the same time. Not all flights were duplicated just one ASQ (Atlantic Southeast) and a GA aircraft. While we all hate adds, it appears the box for the ad does not fit the screen - you can actually scroll around inside the ad box to see the entire ad; and if you click on the ad it takes you to the facebook page for Breitling…in the space of that box! If I can get this machine setup for android development I will try to get screenshots of each and/or some debug data to pass along.
Additionally when looking at airport delays, it says SFO has delays of 1h2m, but when you click on SFO it says “On Schedule”. It also constantly wants to force close after clicking on SFO by going through the “View Airport Delays” button. Process com.flightaware.android.liveflighttracker is always the culprit.
Otherwise this app is looking promising - keep it up!
That seems to be the case…until the phone decides to kill the app process from sleeping in the background. If you haven’t opened the app in a long time or the resources are needed for another app, the phone will kill the process and you’ll have to start all over again with opening it from landscape the first time around.
Even with the app process killed (Either by shutdown or doing a full restart of my thunderbolt) subsequent launches of the app do not require me to be in landscape mode first. Perhaps the difference is that I have logged into the app with my flightaware username/pass and that prevents the issue?
I’ll try that and see what I get. As it stands now, if I kill the process on my Thunderbolt or Incredible (or reboot), I’m not able to go back in to the app in portrait view at all. I have to hold the phone(s) sideways to get the app process running again.
