Speaker Phone Update 1.0.1

Speaker Phone 1.0.1 now supports multiple Widgets on the Home Screens. It can be downloaded from:

SpeakerPhone_1.0.1.apk

Can Money Be Made From Android Apps?

In the near future I'm going to release Speaker Phone on the Android Market and will be making it available for free so I'm not going to profit from that but ultimately I'd like to make my living from writing Android Apps. I decided to search through the Market Place's most popular Applications and I think I only found one paid App in the whole list, MyBackup Pro to give it a plug. Everything else was free. Getting things for free feels nice but does it affect the whole community? Surely its going to put off professional developers if there is little to be made from the community and this may lead to poor quality applications. The Market Place needs a health mix of amateur and professional developers. The professional developers should be producing robust quality applications and giving something for the amateur developers to aspire to as they develop their careers.

Speaker Phone Screenshot

I thought I should post a screenshot so you can see what you are installing if decide to give it a try.

First Android Application

My first Android Application is ready. I have developed an application which automatically enables the Speaker Phone when making or answering a call.

At the heart of the application is a service which monitors the state of the phone. When the phone is off-hook the Speaker is enabled and then disabled when hung up.

Enabling and disabling the service is performed via a Home Screen AppWidget. This part was the most difficult to develop and I'm still not sure I have implemented this correctly. When I have time I will post the AppWidget code here for comments.

When starting the application itself it simply displays details about the application, instructions and a link to here.

In future updates I'd like to make the button into animated images like the HTC Sense Wi-Fi and Bluetooth buttons. I would also like to make it available to be enabled/disabled for other developers to use in their applications.

I have set up a discussion area on Google Groups so please any problems/feedback there and I will attempt to deal with them. The link is given below. Please remember this is my first Android app and its free!

Lost Droids Google Group

I've tested on a HTC Hero (Android 1.5) and used the 1.5 and 2.1 Emulators. I currently have one known issue which occurs if two or more Widget as are applied to the desktop. In this case only one of the Widget is updated, I will address this soon.

It can be download from:

SpeakerPhone.apk