[Spirit FM] mikereidis:
Please see the post above.

I've been saying for some time that:

My policy is to cancel ANY order at ANY time on request*. This is how I do upgrades from Light to Unlocked for the price difference.

Google does not provide any other way to do this. My policy does, and I think it's a very rare policy. Try asking any other dev for a refund 2 years later.

*It's rare, but just today I cancelled an order from June 2012. I have no idea why he wanted the cancel, but I did it. I told him to feel free to tell me why but I haven't heard back.

So my policies always allow a refund or upgrade for price difference.

I also said that Spirit2 could be a no cost upgrade. Well I've raised the "normal" price by 2 Euro's so I'm going to try and honor that pledge by dropping the price to 7 Euro each 1st of the month, Jan 1, Feb 1, etc. In fact I may go lower some months.

Do note that RadioVIS is an example of new features in Spirit2 that Spirit1 never had. And there are many more features to come. If Spirit2 is still alive in 2 years, people who bought now will have enjoyed it for 2 years, an eternity in the fast paced mobile world. Read the beginning of this thread to see how far Spirit1 has come in over 2.5 years.

And digital audio was long intended as a Spirit2 feature. It has never been "officially supported" in Spirit1, though I admit the Play page for Spirit Unlocked gives that impression. I started coding for Spirit2 over a year ago where digital audio first appeared. Then instead of moving to Spirit2 at that time, I backported digital audio, notification shade, lockscreen control, widget and other features from Spirit2 into Spirit1.

So Spirit1 got another year of life. And a bunch of additional "free" capabilities that had been intended for Spirit2. And my income has been dropping pretty much every month since the spring of 2012.

And consider where we were 1-2 years ago. AOSP ROM users were happy just to have any FM at all, never mind the UI and lack of features. Even now, LOTS of people with less popular phones, or phones with FM disabled, show up regularly in this thread desperate just to have any FM, even if it glitches and crashes from time to time or does weird audio things every once in a while.

And the UI of Spirit sucked. I didn't have time to fix it. I was too busy reverse engineering dozens of phones, architectures, chips, stock and AOSP ROMs etc. My work is MUCH harder than the guys building FM apps for HTC, Sony etc. I don't have the resources of Google (LOL) or HTC, Samsung, Motorola. They get the REAL documents and sample code, I have to rip it apart to figure it out. I have to deal with hundreds of phone/ROM combinations and APIs... they get relatively static and tested environments.

And what have I done ? I've made a BETTER app with LOTS more features. Ever configure an OEM app ? Yeah, right, you're lucky if there's 2 or 3 settings. Many you can't even configure for Europe or Japan etc.

How many FM apps besides Sony's support FM over Bluetooth ? How many support equalizers and visualizer ? How many support record besides Samsungs ?

And how many have this RadioVIS feature except for NextRadio which only runs on a limited number of stock phones ?

Dagnabit, Spirit has it's bugs and limits and always will, but other than that I think it's THE BEST DARN FM app available ANYWHERE. Anything like it on Windows ? On Mac ? On Linux ? On Blackberry ? On WinPhone ? On Symbian ? On Ubuntu for phones ? On Firefox OS/Boot 2 Gecko ? On Tizen ? On ANYTHING ?? Maybe there is, I'm interested to know, and it's subjective anyway. but please speak up if there is some higher bar for Spirit to aspire to.

So, to sum up and and make my case for "the community" supporting me:

Spirit2 can be a free update for anyone who wants that and paid full price for Unlocked.

But I'm asking some people, especially, to consider it a 2nd purchase:

- If you've used Spirit for for over 1 year

- If you want to help support this development and express appreciation.

Besides having a lifetime of experience in sofware development, I've put over 10,000 hours of work over almost 3 years into Spirit. Hourly, my income has been about the legal minimum wage where I live, or about 1/5th of a good salary in this industry.

If Spirit2 doesn't help to appreciably raise my income, I will have less time for Spirit2 for AOSP.

I'll have to spend time selling my services and/or code and/or some of the statistics data I've started collecting in Spirit2. Or find a whole new job.

Basically, if the community wants me to better support FM radio, I need some better support from the community.

I have little clue how much the well known names in the ROM community make; those that build SuperX apps and recoveries and various utilities. But most of those well known name are covering a LOT of popular devices, and it's like almost everyone needs their stuff.

I, OTOH, am in a niche even within the niche of the ROM community. A large number of people sneer and laugh at FM radio; likening it to 8 track tape etc.

Pretty much nobody else is doing it right ? Anybody want to try ?

I even put out information/an App Inventor app that anyone can simply build UIs on top of my stuff. So far nobody is interested even in that.

I've been looking forward to making my income more "decent" with a 2nd revenue stream in Spirit2. If it falls flat, I'll be more seriously considering my options.

3 years is as long to much longer than any project I've worked on in private industry this last quarter century+. In a way I'd love to take 6 months off and find something new.

OTOH I'd be happy to try and keep it going for another 2-3 years, if I* can get the support I need.

*I also have 2 kids, 2 educations, 1 house, 1 wife, 1 retirement fund, 2 cars, and 2 cats to take care of. :)