[Spirit FM] mikereidis:
"Motorola/Verizon to thank" only indirectly. My device decisions are pragmatic; mostly based on sales of Unlocked in the past few months on each phone. My Galaxy S2 income is enough to buy a used GS2 every week (52 a year !). My Bionic income is only enough to buy one every year or so.

My income on each device is a function of popularity among custom ROM fans, their disposable income levels and available alternatives. Motorola devices, even with most custom ROMs, can use one of the easily available and free Motorola apps out there, so that means fewer sales for Spirit.

Sorry to be "brutally honest", but "...another day..." is likely never. I think the speaker mode lower reception quality is likely an unfix-able hardware issue; one that Moto doesn't care about because FM is not officially supported. Faults like this may even have influenced their decision not to support FM.

I vaguely recall though my thought that playing to speaker and headset simultaneously may work around this problem. The Moto FM audio API doesn't allow both but there may be a way to do this at a lower level.

But I want to keep moving on Spirit2 and consider the last of the big fixes in Spirit1 to be complete (except for major new issues that arise on popular device/ROM combos). And I haven't made enough on Bionic sales to even buy one Bionic. And I think you're the only one to notice this issue.

Carriers also love it when you have to buy a new phone (from them) because the battery charge doesn't last long enough after a year, and when your apps and data have outgrown your storage.

I've said my main motivation is to make an income, not some lofty ideal of bringing FM to those without, but on reflection that's not entirely true.

My job satisfaction is in large part due to the customers who are happy. Many are very grateful that I can solve their desires for OTA radio, despite the obstacles the phone OEMs and carriers erect. It feels good to build something useful. I've worked for large companies on interesting projects. But it's painful to see when products you've put thousands of hours into are canned, one project after another. (Nokia, cough, cough.)

And I'm on a bit of a mission with Spirit2, to support open source, and try to make it easier for other developers to build an Android FM app, or add support for different chips and devices, in a way that needn't tie those apps to requiring my code underneath.

ST-Ericsson is sadly in some financial and organizational turmoil again. I'm concerned because they are the proposers/developers of the experimental Android FM API in a branch of AOSP. There was activity last on Nov 22 and I'm watching/hoping to see it pick up again, and ideally with the weight of Google and chip and phone OEM support.

But if AOSP abandons this proposed API, I will keep at it and hope at least that it gains traction in custom ROMs (difficult when many CM devs seem hostile to OTA FM support though). I know as a single developer that I can't support hundreds of phones. But I CAN implement the FM API framework ST-Ericsson has proposed and hope that other devs will be interested in writing FM chip and audio plugins, and apps/wallpapers/widgets etc.

If those talented Chinese hackers who can so easily hack Spirit would put their efforts into writing plug-ins instead, that would be great. I'll be happy to "steal" their work for a change, LOL. Spirit2 will not contain any futile protection mechanisms, so hopefully they'll have a bit more time, and be more motivated when I only support a few high end FM & audio chips.

See next post...