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SMS Popup v1.2.0 released, now with 100% more Ice Cream Sandwich goodness

2012-04-14T14:08:00.001-04:00

After almost 1.5 years without a release, SMS Popup v1.2.0 is now out on the Google Play Store. Apologies for the lengthy delay between releases, my personal life has been just a tad busy and a major re-write of the app was required to support many new features. So what's new? See below, but behind the scenes I gutted the code and re-wrote much of it to take advantage of the more modern Android OS version APIs. This includes a nice new Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) Holo theme for the latest devices plus some patterns taken from the Android Design site (like swipe gestures to navigate multiple unread messages!).

I also created a Google+ Page for SMS Popup, so head on over and leave any feedback or comments.

Update (2012-04-19): The initial launch of SMS Popup 1.2.0 had some bugs which I hadn't noticed in my testing. I have now pushed an update (v1.2.1) to the Play Store to address some of these:

Custom contact notifications should now work correctly
The popup size can now be variable (smaller for short messages, larger for longer messages)
Fixed: in some specific cases, messages weren't being marked as read when hitting "close"
Fixed: several bugs which were causing crashes
Fixed: duplicate messages in popup window in certain cases

Update (2012-05-05): A few other bugs were identified that were affecting a smaller number of users. Today I pushed v1.2.4 to the Play Store to address these additional issues:

Fix quick reply failing to send on Samsung devices
Fix popup showing in messaging app on Samsung devices
Make popup size more dynamic (size changes from 1 line of text up to 6 now)
Fix popup time stamp issues on some US CDMA carrier devices (Verizon/Sprint)
Fix rogue messages appearing from "(unknown)"
Add timeout around acquiring Android partial wakelock to make sure device goes back to sleep
Add back "Subject" line to MMS messages
Fix missed first notification when popup is disabled

SMS Popup v1.2.0

Brand new Holo theme for ICS devices
Browse multiple unread messages in popup by swiping left/right
Full re-write of much of the app to take advantage of newer Android. Minimum Android version for this release is API Level 7 (Android 2.1 Eclair), the old version of SMS Popup will stay in the Play Store for older devices
New option to show an unlock button when screen locked to prevent accidental button presses
Update to language translations

SMS Popup v1.1.0 released

2010-12-17T22:59:00.001-05:00

A minor SMS Popup update is now available from Android Market. I have been working on refactoring a lot of the code to allow for multiple messages within the popup - before spending the time to do that I wanted to get this minor update out. So stay tuned, hopefully the next release will have more significant updates!

SMS Popup v1.1.0

Added a larger selection of notification icons to choose from (including the new gingerbread icon for Nexus S users)
Added new option to enable/disable notification sound while on a call
Updated and added translations
A few minor bug fixes

Want to contribute to the SMS Popup project? Here's how.

2010-08-19T00:02:00.002-04:00

1. Translations

SMS Popup has now been translated into 18 languages via various contributions from around the world. If you find missing or incorrect translations in SMS Popup, or would like to translate the app to a new language, check out the wiki page on how to get going using a collaboration platform called Launchpad.

I would love to see translations for some more Asian languages (especially Korean and Japanese!).

Here is the current list of languages: Catalan, Chinese (simplified & traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish

2. Icons & Graphics

Version 1.0.9 of SMS Popup adds support for choosing your own notification icon. If you're a graphics guru and would like to contribute some cool icons for the next release, drop me an email or attach the icons over at our Google Code site. What we need are a 25x25 pixel and 38x38 pixel version of the icon(s) in png format.

In addition, I'm hoping to add some custom backgrounds for the popup window in a future release. Android uses something called a 9-patch png file to correctly scale to the background of views. It would be much appreciated if anyone out there is able to contribute some nice looking backgrounds to use.

3. Bug Reports

Finally, if you spot any problems with SMS Popup, either email me or file a bug over at our issue tracker. However, please try and include as much information as possible in the report - this will make troubleshooting the problem a lot easier (things like phone model, carrier, OS version and how to reproduce the problem are really useful).

If you're on a device with Android 2.2 (Froyo), another great way to provide feedback is to use the built in Android "Report" button that appears on the "Force Close" dialog. Simply click "Report", type in some information about what went wrong and click "Send".

SMS Popup v1.0.9 released

2010-08-18T00:09:00.002-04:00

After quite a while without an update, v1.0.9 of SMS Popup is now up in the Market. I~~'ll post some more detailed information tomorrow, but for now, check out the release notes over on the Google Code site:~~
~~http://code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/wiki/ReleaseNotes~~

Full list of updates now listed below -

SMS Popup v1.0.9

Bug fix: Messages sent from quick reply on Droid X (or any Motoblur phone) were resending on reboot (and some other system events).
Bug fix: Random app crashes on Droid and Evo phones after Froyo OS update
Bug fix: Regular reply was not opening correct conversation in messaging app (it was opening last viewed conversation)
Enable choice of notification icon (3 choices now, will add more in next release)
Enable new privacy controls (hide sender + always use privacy)
Ignore Sprint visual voicemail messages
Refreshed translations from launchpad, SMS Popup now translated into 18 different languages!

Updates for SMS Popup and Countdown Alarm ... hopefully coming soon

2010-06-22T15:24:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates to my two main Android apps - SMS Popup and Countdown Alarm - as of late. I just haven't had any spare time to work on them :| But fear not, the projects are still alive and I'm hoping to have some time in the next month or so to start working on them again.

A number of people have contributed translations to SMS Popup as well and I know they are patiently waiting for a new Market release that includes the updated strings.

In the meantime, remember that both apps are open source so feel free to browse the source over at the Google code site (and let me know if you would like to contribute to the apps):
http://code.google.com/p/android-countdownalarm/
http://code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/

SMS Popup v1.0.8 released

2010-02-22T23:41:00.006-05:00

Head on over to Android Market to grab v1.0.8 of SMS Popup. This release has a few new minor features, better MMS support, some bug fixes and refreshed translation strings. Assuming this release is stable, we're going to start working on some bigger features for the next release. Speaking of which, I'd like to introduce Macarse - he has been helping me get SMS Popup setup on Launchpad Translations to better handle the various translated strings and going forward will be helping to build new features and fix bugs within the SMS Popup code itself (thanks for all your help up till now and hope we can continue to improve the app together!).

Speaking of the new translation setup - if you would like to contribute translated strings to SMS Popup, it's now super easy, see our Translation Wiki entry for how to get going.

SMS Popup v1.0.8

New Quick Contact support for Android 2.0+ devices (see screenshot below), just tap the contact photo or info icon to activate
Updated translations strings sync'd down from Launchpad (contribute translations to SMS Popup)
Better handling of MMS, still might not be perfect but give it a go and file an issue if you see any problems
Better handling of docked mode (phones like Droid and Nexus One have cradles or docks), instead of showing a popup the system notification will be used to prevent the phone not staying in screensaver mode
Bug fix: custom notifications for SMS received from email gateways should be functional again

New Quick Contact feature in action (Android 2.0+ only):

SMS Popup v1.0.7 (and v1.0.6) in Android Market now

2010-01-24T23:08:00.002-05:00

Head on over to Android Market to grab v1.0.7 of SMS Popup. I haven't had a lot of spare time recently to work on the app (which is also why I forgot to write a blog post for v1.0.6) so I've mostly been working on tweaks and bug fixes. Assuming I have a bit more spare time in the coming weeks/months, expect to see some larger features in the next release.

SMS Popup v1.0.7 (and v1.0.6)

Soft keyboard shows automatically now when using quick reply
New option to leave screen off when a new message comes in
Several bug fixes: fixed issue with phone not always waking up, fixed issue with notification icon contact name not showing correctly
Several other app tweaks (including new higher res app icon for higher res phones like Droid and Nexus One!

SMS Popup v1.0.5 out now (a few minor updates)

2009-11-20T00:49:00.001-05:00

Here's another small update, nothing too major in this one. Hopefully v1 of the app should be stable now for most users so I'll start slowing down releases and start working on some newer features again so stay tuned!

SMS Popup v1.0.5

Added Android OS Text-to-speech engine (for devices on Donut and above)
Switched regular Reply back to using threadId to reply (this should fix issues on devices like the Hero and Cliq where you would be unable to see previous messages in the thread). For users who want to trigger the old Reply you can switch it back in the Button Configuration, its called "Reply (to phone number)" - the only major use I've found for this is if you want Google Voice to trigger when clicking the Reply button.
Blur background option has now been removed (was causing massive slowdown on some devices)
Bug fixes as usual

SMS Popup v1.0.2 (and v1.0.3 and v1.0.4) with better support for Droid

2009-11-11T00:48:00.006-05:00

Here's another quick bug fix release which also adds some support for Android 2.0 (Eclair) and therefore the newly released Droid phone (wish I had one to play with!). The contacts framework in Eclair received a major overhaul so that it can support information from multiple sources (Gmail, Exchange, Facebook, etc.) - this is great, but it does make any app that accesses contacts slightly tricker. For now I just put in some quick fixes so that the basics work but some additional work will need to be done to ensure 100% compatibility.

Given a lot of people were having trouble working out how to turn Quick Reply on and off, I also added a new option under Additional Settings to easily toggle this feature.

This release also adds translation strings for Czech, thanks goes out to Tomáš (http://android.own.cz/) for helping out here!

SMS Popup v1.0.2, v1.0.3, v1.0.4

Initial support for Android 2.0 (Eclair)
Bug fixes as usual
Added option for easier toggle of Quick Reply function (look under Additional Settings)
Update: TTS was broken in v1.0.2 so v1.0.3 has been released to fix it
Update: Yet *another* update, sorry about all these updates. This fixes up lag when using Quick Reply on Droid and also adds better ability to handle messages received from email->sms gateways.

Quick Reply or No Quick Reply

2009-11-02T23:48:00.006-05:00

Since launching v1.0.0 and v1.0.1 of SMS Popup I've been receiving a lot of feedback around the new "quick reply" feature - some people love it, some hate it. Luckily you can easily turn this feature on and off via the configuration options - although it's not so obvious how to do this (I'm planning on making the option easier to find in a future release):

~~Load up SMS Popup settings -> Additional Settings -> Button Configuration -> Button 3 (or whichever button you have reply set to) -> Choose regular Reply or Quick Reply~~

Update: As of SMS Popup v1.0.2 there is now a quick toggle feature for Quick Reply

You can even choose both if you like to have them both accessible easily from the popup - and as an additional tip, if you long-press on the popup you can always access all options (both reply types, delete, view contact, text-to-speech etc.).

Remember to always check the SMS Popup FAQ for tips and tricks like this if you run into problems.

Quick Reply in action:

SMS Popup v1.0.1 bug fix release

2009-11-01T18:55:00.002-05:00

I received a ton of feedback after v1.0.0 came out a few days ago, mostly positive but some negative (mostly because some people don't like using quick reply - of course you can turn it off but it's not an easy option to find). Quite a few users reported various bugs or UI quirks as well - I rushed a bit to get some of the more annoying ones fixed in SMS Popup v1.0.1 which I just posted to the Android Market. Go grab it and keep the feedback coming!

SMS Popup v1.0.1

Bug fix: Contact photos should now be showing again for HTC Hero users
Bug and UI fix: Quick reply is now a little easier to use, the send button has been moved where you can access it when the soft keyboard is in use and it also works in landscape when the soft keyboard is full screen.
Bug fix: Notifications were sounding while users were on the phone, this feature was requested by quite a few users, how ever it seems a lot more dislike it. Therefore I have removed this for now, but will add it back in as an option in a future version.
Bug fix: Updated the regular Reply intent so that it works with Google Voice again
App now defaults to regular Reply (instead of Quick Reply)

SMS Popup v1.0.0 released - quick replies, preset messages, per-contact custom notifications and more!

2009-10-28T20:52:00.020-04:00

SMS Popup v1.0.0 has been posted to the Android Market! This release has the most new features of any release since I started the project almost 1 year ago (Dec 2008). See below for a summary of the changes. Thanks to all the translators for helping update the strings.

As always, you can find the source code over at the SMS Popup Google Code site.

Bugs, feature requests, comments? Try emailing me or even better, post to the SMS Popup Google Group (email is tough for me to respond to as the SMS Popup inbox is constantly flooded).

SMS Popup v1.0.0

Quick reply directly from poup
Reply by voice using quick reply and voice transcription
Store preset messages and reply using them directly from popup
Customize notifications, popup, vibrate, LED on a per-contact basis (this can be used to effectively ignore certain users or single out others)
Configure the buttons on the popup
Use just the notifications, just the popup or both
Bug fixes and minor enhancements galore (better clearing of notification icon, alerts while on the phone, contact photo image resizing for larger contact photos)
Compatible with devices that run Android 1.5 (Cupcake) and above - but still includes support for multiple resolutions (both smaller like QVGA and larger like WVGA)

Screenshots:

SMS Popup v1.0.0 just around the corner

2009-10-20T23:47:00.007-04:00

Just a quick note to say that the next version of SMS Popup is just about ready for release. There are a ton of new features in this version, for example: quick replies from the popup, preset messages, voice transcription for replies and per contact notification customization. I'll get into more details shortly but for now if you want to try it out I put a release candidate version on the SMS Popup code site:
~~http://android-smspopup.googlecode.com/files/SMSPopup-1.0.0-rc1.apk~~
~~(Update: forgot to mention that RC1 will only work on Android OS Donut or above, I will be releasing another version for Cupcake phones)~~

http://android-smspopup.googlecode.com/files/SMSPopup-1.0.0-rc2.apk

Update2: Apparently quite a few people are still using Android 1.5 (Cupcake) so I created RC2 that's compatible with Cupcake as well.

No doubt there will be some bugs considering all the new code so please send me an email if you spot any (it's only me coding this app so I have limited resources to do thorough testing).

I'm planning on publishing this to Market in the next week or so.

SMS Popup v0.9.97 out now - minor changes

2009-06-22T00:43:00.008-04:00

Head on over to Android Market and pick yourself up v0.9.97 of SMS Popup - no major changes in this release, but I did add more translations to the core package. Plus I moved over to the Cupcake (Android 1.5) SDK, which means if you aren't on Cupcake or above you will no longer be able to run SMS Popup (or even see it in Market) - you can still grab v0.9.96 (or any earlier version) from the Google Code site though but hopefully the bulk of people are on Cupcake (or Donut?) now.

Sorry there haven't been any new features or refinements for the app in a while - I haven't had a lot of spare time recently. However, I do have a few cool features planned for a release soon - so stay tuned!

Thanks goes to Norman Obry for the French translation and Kevin (www.hiapk.com) for the Chinese translations!

SMS Popup v0.9.97

Bugfix for Donut (Android 1.6) OS (config activity was crashing)
Switched to Android 1.5 (Cupcake) SDK, SMS Popup v0.9.97 will not run on previous Android versions (<=1.1)
New French and Chinese (simplified and traditional) translations
Added Russian and Spanish translations to the core package

SMS Popup v0.9.94 & v0.9.95 & v0.9.96 (d'oh) - say hello to cupcake

2009-05-09T00:27:00.011-04:00

Your Android device should be notifying you of a new version of SMS Popup shortly - v0.9.94 is now out. This release fixes a few minor cupcake problems and adds a couple of new features - nothing big though. I'm aiming for some new features soon though so stay tuned.

If you notice any issues with this version, please post over in the discussion group.

SMS Popup v0.9.94 & v0.9.95 & v0.9.96

Minor Cupcake fixes: privacy mode works correctly, soft keyboard shows for custom vibrate
Popup no longer shows when in system messaging app
New option to hide all buttons in the long-press (context) menu
Update: there was a minor bug in 0.9.94 where the view button was showing when it wasn't supposed to be - this is fixed now in 0.9.95
Another Update: there was another minor bug related to privacy mode (view button would not work if secure pattern was off) - this is fixed now in 0.9.96 - sorry for all the updates!

Discussion Group for SMS Popup

2009-04-08T01:08:00.003-04:00

Want to discuss feature requests, issues or offer some praise (yeh) or criticism (boo) of SMS Popup? Head on over to the newly created discussion group:
http://groups.google.com/group/sms-popup-for-android

Not sure if anyone will really use this, but thought I'd throw it up there to see if it sticks :)

SMS Popup v0.9.92 out now with text-to-speech!

2009-04-01T22:07:00.006-04:00

Android Market should soon show the latest update to SMS Popup - v0.9.92 - I haven't had a lot of time to work on the app, so this release just cleans up some of the code (which as a user you won't really notice) and fixes a few bugs.

The only new thing to appear is TTS (text-to-speech) - you can now have your messages read aloud to you thanks to the amazing eyes-free TTS library. Keep in mind I threw this in at the last minute so it's likely to be buggy - to use it, simply long-press anywhere on the message popup. If you don't have the TTS app installed it will take you through setting things up.

SMS Popup v0.9.92

Improvements for status bar notifications (removed correctly now in certain circumstances)
Threads marked read correctly now when a message is deleted via the popup
Cupcake compatibility
Beta feature: Text-to-speech, hear your messages! (long-press on the popup to try this out)

Update: v0.9.93 is also out now, this release just fixes a single bug where notifications sometimes didn't trigger if the conversation view was open when the phone went to sleep

SMS Popup FAQ and v0.9.91 released

2009-03-20T16:17:00.005-04:00

I just created a FAQ for SMS Popup - so head on over and check it out. Unanswered question? Tell me about it in the comments of this post.

Last week I also posted a minor update to SMS Popup that addresses an issue where notifications were not playing all the time.

SMS Popup v0.9.91

Bug fix for notifications not running sometime

SMS Popup Source Code Released

2009-02-25T00:18:00.004-05:00

So I had planned to clean up the source code for SMS Popup before releasing the source code - however, it seems the cats out of the bag as people are stumbling upon the code already over at code.google.com:

http://code.google.com/p/android-smspopup/

You should be able to download and build the app yourself without much issue. The code is still quite messy and if anyone spots bugs or issues feel free to file them on the code page (or ideally help me fix them hehe).

Hopefully this will help beginner Android developers wrap their head around working with SMS and MMS messages.

Update: I just noticed Mike DG, creator of the dgAlert app in the Market has just switched his app over to the SMS Popup code base.

SMS Popup v0.9.9 released

2009-02-22T18:46:00.005-05:00

I'm just about to upload v0.9.9 of SMS Popup to the Market (getting close to v1.0.0!). Thanks to Artem Kavalerov for translating the app into Russian - once again it isn't yet possible to switch current phones to Russian locale but hopefully this will be available soon.

SMS Popup v0.9.9

Screen goes off immediately after popup timeout now (this saves your battery - especially if your system screen timeout setting is high)
New option to "dim screen" when popup shows (saves battery)
New option to turn screen on again for reminders
New option to customize specific color for LED (choose specific red/green/blue values)
New option to customize LED blink rate
Notifications now update rather than clear if there are still unread messages
Individual messages are now marked as read when clicking "Close" (rather than the whole thread)
Russian localization

SMS Popup v0.9.7 and v0.9.8 released

2009-02-14T10:13:00.004-05:00

Another update of SMS Popup is now in the Market. Thanks goes out to Diego Fernández for translating the app into Spanish - I'm not actually sure it's possible to switch any Android devices into Spanish locale yet (except the emulator), but once it is possible the translation is already included in the app :)

SMS Popup v0.9.7 & v0.9.8

Fixed crash (force close) when receiving MMS messages without a subject (hopefully)
Added an option to show a Delete button on the popup (by popular demand)
Spanish localization

Update: v0.9.7 had a minor bug that prevented messages being deleted when using the new delete button - v0.9.8 fixes this (although I suspect it is still broken for deleting MMS messages).

Getting ready to open source my Android apps

2009-02-12T22:04:00.004-05:00

I have decided to open source my 2 published Android applications (SMS Popup and Countdown Alarm). Why? Well firstly I'm a big proponent of open source software - but also I have been a little overwhelmed by the number of (good) feature requests for the apps and I honestly just don't have the time to implement all of them myself. So if anyone is interested in helping out, let me know! I'll post again once the code is cleaned up a little and ready to be added to a SVN repository.

I will also be trying to post up a few simple Android development tutorials over the coming weeks - mostly based around my apps. Hopefully this will spur other beginner developers to create some other cool and useful apps for Android.

SMS Popup reviews, localization/i18n and another new release (v0.9.6)!

2009-02-08T14:50:00.007-05:00

First I wanted to give a shoutout to Scott over at AndroidGuys - he published a positive review of SMS Popup last week :) aside from some good press, it also helped me find some people to translate the app into other languages (more on that in a tic).

Another website called AppVee AndroidApps also did a review (including a YouTube video) of SMS Popup:

I'm also pleased to announce that SMS Popup has now been translated into German and Dutch! A very big thanks to Feyyaz (blog) and Melle for helping with this. Hopefully there will be more languages coming soon enough :)

Last but not least, I also posted v0.9.6 of the app out to the Market, no interesting new functionality quite yet unfortunately. I spent a bit of time cleaning up the code so that it will make life easier to add and extend to the app in the future.

SMS Popup v0.9.6

More bug fixes (preventing more force close messages)
Better MMS support: an MMS is now treated like a SMS, there is a popup and reminders - at the moment the subject is just displayed with a "View MMS" button (not sure if it will be possible to show the MMS images inside the popup)
German and Dutch localizations for those folks in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands - I'm not actually sure I published the app correctly to the Market so I would love to hear from anyone in these countries who successfully got the app and are using the newly localized strings

SMS Popup v0.9.5 released

2009-01-31T16:04:00.005-05:00

I just released v0.9.5 of SMS Popup, unfortunately there are no new features in this version - just some bug fixes. I revamped the code so most of the work is done outside of the BroadcastReceiver now which should help to prevent a lot of the "force close" or "this application has stopped responding" type messages.

The next version will have some new features which I'm working on now.

In addition to posting to the official Android Market, I also always post to these 3rd party Android application sites:

SMS Popup v0.9.5

Reorganized code to prevent "force close" and "application has stopped responding" messages
Selecting "Reply" will now always clear the notification icon
Reorganized the WakeLock code to be a lot cleaner

SMS Popup v0.9.4 released!

2009-01-23T18:08:00.007-05:00

Go check the Android Market now for the next version of SMS Popup - it includes a bunch of bug fixes and a few new (very requested) features!

As a side note, if anyone would like to help me translate the app for the following countries, please send me an email (adam at everythingandroid dot net):
Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Poland
(of course if you would like to translate for other languages let me know as well).

SMS Popup v0.9.4

Tons of bug fixes, mostly to do with the WakeLock code which was causing the app to "force close" intermittently. Hopefully this fixes the majority of major bugs but time will tell.
Basic MMS support - this was more difficult to implement than I thought. The app should now detect MMS's and trigger a regular (non-popup) notification (it should be almost identical to the system one). It will not turn on the screen or show a nice popup yet - I will try and add this in the next version.
Configurable vibrate patterns - choose from a list of pre-set vibrate patterns or create your own :)
Fixed the landscape layout so it fits correctly when the contact has a photo