Hey Guys, one month ago, I started to develop Android app. Here is what I made, a very simple, user-friendly~? flashlight app [b]My App[/b]. I really like some feedback from the android community to see how I did, and like to share with u guys my experience. Thanks for the great support!
EDIT: Hi Guys, I just updated my app,(might take sometime for play store to show up) based on you guys’ feedback, they are really useful, I appreciate it and for the continual support!. Here are a list of changes I made: email me to let me know. Thanks for support!)
–Fixed Flashlight not working on some phones
–(If you are very lucky cause of the flash still doesn’t work please
–Removed permission for GPS access.( I am 50% sure the compass still works with it. Please let me know if I am wrong.)
–Added Settings to configure if the flashlight will turn on/off on application start-up.
–Updated power button image with better resolution.
What I learned from this: First of all, I did know a bit of programming before I started making apps, so I wasn’t a complete noob, but I started with reading books about android developing since I knew almost nothing! The first thing I learned was how to make a event handler for a button and things picked up from there, and I thought I was ready to start my app. At that time, I wanted to start something easy that I won’t be overwhelmed with all the features, so I decided to make a flashlight app.Time went on, after about a week, I showed my friends mine prototype, and their first reaction was “it looks stupid”, “there are tons of flashlight apps out there”. I wasn’t too depressed at that time, since I knew I was a noob and the app did look stupid.(I wasn’t too stuck in my design box, if you know what I mean). Then I asked them what could I do to make it better? and they suggested me some valuable features. I added the features, and showed my friends again. Their reaction was still “it looks stupid”. This time I thought to myself,“You need to learn some graphics design”, and I didn’t know what I got myself into. So the next two weeks, I was drawing pictures every night,( during day-time I have an internship) “Google & Youtube & stackoverflow” are my best friend when learning something new. For me, Drawing pictures was frustrating, I draw something, then I ditch the picture to draw something else. After when I almost give up on drawing pictures over and over again, I noticed my biggest problem, Different Screen Sizes, sigh. Using the android SDK emulated device was both slow and somtimes the scale won’t be the same on the actual phone, so the layout would look different than what you see on the emulated device…GRRRRRRR. So I went to my “best friends* for learning” again and I found a Software called genymotion, which emulates major devices faster and with correct scale to real size. genymotion helped me a lot to test on different devices, and soon after here I am, trying to get more feedbacks, and what better place to get them then on a forum? lol (I might post in other forums as well =P)
If you read this far. Thanks for the support!!~ I would really appreciate your feedback & bugs on my app at the top of the post.