[Spirit FM] mikereidis:
Just email me again. I would email you but I forget your email name and searching mervluk shows nothing.

I just posted an 1123 release on Play. I'm calling it "Release Candidate 1" because I think I may make it a full official release, or with slight mods as 1124.

I was posting many betas over the last 2 months ending with 1112 release. I do that to get feedback from more people, but the reality is that over 99% of feedback comes from customers anyway. So I eventually remove the downloads, as I've done recently.

I've been doing a MAJOR Re-architecture* of Spirit2 over the last 3 months, which was initiated by the need to support Android Lollipop 5.0. MANY root apps are broken now, and Spirit was using so many "tricks" that it breaks worse than most root apps with the ramp up of security/SELinux in Android 5.

So I did not want to post the new, very broken until recently, Spirit2 for "mass consumption". Despite that Spirit2 users tend to be bug tolerant modders, many would also not appreciate an update that broke FM badly for them.

I will still have plenty of bug reports to deal with when I release the new this week. And for some people, the best I'll be able to in the short term is send them the older 0912 version. Even among the limited devices supported by Spirit2, there is a WIDE variation; Example: G3, which I don't have, is a supportable Qualcomm FM+audio device, but some people have had problems that I'm not sure how to fix.

It is unfortunate that Google does not provide Play customers with better upgrade and older version fallback options. With this, people could roll back to a previous known working version without having to email me for that old version. The closest we have is the beta channel. Beta users can roll back to the last non-beta release.

MAJOR Re-architecture*: It is also unfortunate that there are vrtually no UI improvements at this time. Many people will see no change in Spirit2, despite all the work underneath.

Did I send you the Feb or March version before Spirit2 speaker support ? I think/hope the speaker problems are resolved now.

I'm not sure what you mean about "less fair for Spirit 1 users" and relation to "Google voice bug". I was careful to always call Spirit1/Unlocked digital audio mode "experimental". It requires explicitly setting a special Audio-> Method (except Galaxy S GT-I9000, due to speaker damage risk.)

Spirit1 digital audio mode was really intended for Spirit2, and was first seen in the SUPER early alphas for Spirit2 (2 years ago), which took a year before being put into a new Spirit2 (1 year ago now). I ended up back-porting the Spirit2 features to Spirit1, partly because I didn't want to deal with development for 2 Spirits at the same time.

Spirit1 is now "yester-years" app. It will now only see minor mods or fixes here and there. It's had close to 4 years of life now, from Android 2.1 - 4.4. It still supports 2.1 and a few people still use it on 2.1; I can see the stats in my Google Play dev console.

Spirit1 is held together with software "duct-tape" for a long time now. I almost can't change anything now without breaking it on some phones, many of them ancient devices with ancient Android ROMs I haven't tested in years.

Apps have lives. Spirit1 has done pretty well IMO in lasting 3.5+ years for the first customers. Anyone who bought Spirit1 in the last year or so can ask for an order cancel, in order to move to Spirit2 at no cost.

I briefly considered an Android Lollipop specific paid upgrade. But I think that would make more sense if Spirit2 was a $2-$5 app. For a $10 app, I think people should expect more than a year's worth of upgrades. For various reasons (like my dropping income, partly due to Samsung and others removing FM from flagships) I don't think Spirit2 will have the same commercial life as Spirit1. But at least a 2 year life could be reasonable.

An app should end it's life on a good note. Spirit2 still has many shortcomings and bugs that Spirit1 does not have. I can't end the life of Spirit2 in it's current state.