[Spirit FM] mikereidis:
I'm taking a MUCH needed break from Spirit and will restart work on Spirit2 in late October.

After 2.7 years and over 9,000 hours spent developing, supporting and otherwise dealing with Spirit FM:

- I need to draw a line in the sand here and take a week off to "detox" from the Internet.

- Then I need a month for doing taxes and pressing family, household and personal tasks.

- Then I need at least a few months to explore where Spirit is going with Spirit2 and/or some other FM app related stuff I'm considering.

So,... given that I endeavour to be as honest and open as I can: I regret that going forward, I'm not going to be able to provide the high level of support

I've been providing and been struggling to maintain.

As always, if anyone has purchased Spirit and feel they haven't had sufficient enjoyment: I cancel any order at any time on request.

For answers to most questions about Spirit, use the search feature on this XDA thread. If you can't find an answer, post, and hopefully some helpful person will answer,

maybe even me occasionally. :) I previously answered every question on this thread, but I have to let that go now.

I appreciate if anyone helps anyone else here, but ask that you be nice. I think it's probably better to ignore a poster than respond with an angry "Read the FAQ !".

If Spirit doesn't work with default settings, maybe alternative settings will work. But this is the exception now. If it doesn't work by default, it probably won't.

As time goes on, stock and custom ROMs will update/change and something may break in the FM access. I've hypothesized that for custom ROMs, within 3 months as many as 50%

of ROMs will have a role in some problem with Spirit. If Spirit has 0 or just a few small updates in the next 3 months, I'll be interested to see the result.

This breakage rate is largely the nature of the fast pace of change in ROMs, but change happens in stock ROMs too. The bluetooth stack has undergone major revisions in

Android 4.2-4.3. I've dealt with that, and Android 4.3 related issues, so hopefully Spirit will run well on new or recent phones for a while.

Since I'm looking at other "projects" in the Android FM app area, there's a reasonable chance that Spirit will continue to have related updates. But since I may

(or may not) be concentrating on stock FM support, improvements may be restricted to stock support. The beta access for Spirit Unlocked and Light may be a way to deal with that.

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Sidebar:

It's been a constant struggle to reverse engineer FM chip/API details as they change from chip to chip, phone to phone, OEM-OEM, Android version, API version, custom ROM, and more.

Google isn't helping the cause any, nor are many of the phone OEMs, chip OEMs and carriers. Nobody else has been "crazy enough" to try what I'm doing with FM.

Gee, even the top FM apps from Sony and Samsung don't do most of the digital audio features that Spirit can, even on an ancient GT-I9000 Galaxy S.

But despite the work and crazy hours I put in, there are still some nasty & effectively unsolvable problems, like audio on Desire HD, a UI that needs serious improvement,

and annoying things like 87.5 on startup with stock Broadcom API.

The code for Spirit is a horrible mess, and deserves to be replaced with a (properly) designed Spirit2 or whatever.

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I'm not going to be monitoring my usual email address mikereidis@gmail.com as much, and not at all during any Internet "detox" week.

This email will auto-respond that:

- Purchase cancel requests (Only !) be sent to spirit.fm.unlocked.cancel@gmail.com, or perhaps to the normal email with "CANCEL"

spelled out in capitals in the subject. And be patient please, even Google can be glacially slow handling these.

I may or may not respond to any emails or posts. Sorry, I kinda hate to become "that kind of dev", but this is essential for me, and for Spirit, at this time.

I appreciate all the appreciation for Spirit, and feel satisfied with the 4.7 out of 5 rating that Spirit Unlocked has on Play, from thousands of people.

I hate to see that rating drop because I can't provide the same level of support, but I guess that would be fair and should be expected. I'd be more likely to drop a rating if I was the

customer and there was little or no support for some problem.

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So, in the next few months, there is the potential for Spirit to re-continue, as it has for 2.7 years now. Or it may take a new form; remains to be seen.

It's important for me to be honest and say that, instead of pretending I absolutely will return to Spirit if you can just wait. I refuse to be that kind of sales / business man.

Business-wise, for Spirit as it exists now, some might see this as "burning a bridge". I see it more as a bridge in urgent need of repair/replacement to prevent loss of life. Need to replace the old wooden bridge with a modern steel structure...

Thank you everyone for all your support, and see you on "the other side" ! :)