[Android Apps and Games] brandall:
V3.0.2.9B up!

Quoting the above previous release notes for ease!

I've now completed going through every command eventuality I can think of! Pretty sure the commands are all fully functional now.

This release is mainly fixes:

Facebook unbanned me - Credit Hannes Ahremark for knocking up some banner images for me!

Fix - Wave/Shake starting on their own! - Credit ME :angel:

Fix - Translations being in the wrong voice - Credit Dtrieb

Fix - Random numbers being dialled - Credit Itassos (and others)

Fix - Google Chrome not opening web pages correctly - Credit Jon Best via email

Fix - Loads of others, sorry if I've forgotten you.. :rolleyes:

Bug - Notification icons are appearing distorted on some devices

Bug - Pause timeout not working for some Jelly Bean versions (Google's fault!)

Updated User Interface

If you go to the Settings tab, you'll see that I've implemented a swipe action for the three panels. Many more changes to come, but this will be the basis for the different sections of the application. It also reduces memory usage.

Memory Usage

Warning - boring explanation approaching! :crying:

I believe I've reduced the memory usage of all commands to an absolute minimum. However, there is a fundamental Android issue whereby the objects in the user interface are remaining in the long term memory, this will NOT increase the battery consumption though!

Once you've exited the application user interface, you can use the command 'restart'. This will release all unnecessary memory. You should see the memory usage (in Android running applications) drop down to about 6mb. This will vary and spike throughout the command process, but shouldn't get much higher than 10mb once it has settled back down.

The app also attaches to your voice engine and Google Voice Search, so the combination of the three may spike very high, but I am now releasing both of these when the app has been dormant for five minutes.

I working on a way to automatically and periodically flush the memory, so it returns to the base 7mb level.

Wake-up-phrase

I've made many improvements to this feature, but an issue remains for Jelly Bean users due an Android time-out bug. If you are unlucky enough to say wake up when I'm handing this bug (around 10 seconds in a loop), then your command may not be detected. To deactivate the permanent recognition, you can say 'stop listening'. To activate, say 'start listening' - these will be configurable soon!

Knowing when to restart the permanent recognition once you've executed a command has not been easy! If it starts again at the wrong time, please do let me know when this occurred! You may get a 'recogniser busy' error under these circumstances. To fix it, turning utter! off and on again from the ActionBar in the main app should do the trick.

Wakelock - Whenever the permanent recognition is active, your CPU will not shut-down. So, you can continue to use the wake-up-phrase when the display goes off. As this is going to use a lot of battery anyway, I don't really see this as an issue :confused:

Voice Engine

I'm optimising Google TTS for all OS versions, so I recommend you switch to that in this build to give it a try. It will use the more natural network synthesised voice whenever possible.

Bug - If Google can't produce the network voice response, they just do nothing............ and don't tell me........ *sigh* - so if you just get silence, this will be why. Yet again, I'm working on a work-around *sigh*

You can deactivate the network synthesised voice in the utter! settings should you wish.

Remember - Using the network voice will result in two extra http calls. If you have a slow connection, it's best not to use it to avoid delays in the intro and responses.

What's next!?

To-do - Headset support

To-do - Update UI dialog formatting etc

To-do - Update new commands in the command list

To-do - Reduce the app APK size

To-do - Wolfram Alpha testing!

I'd like to get the above finished very quickly so I can get the rebuild onto the Play Store. Once I've caught the bugs, it'll be on to translation!

Finally

Just a big thank you as always to the support I get from you here and the mass of emails I get from users via email too. It's greatly appreciated and I wouldn't be here without you all :good:

Right, I'm off to get very messy in Germany! Das ist sehr gut (according to utter!). That reminds me, you can now say 'translate the clipboard to +language'!

Have fun! :victory: