Monthly Archives: November 2011

Recently, I implemented some code to download some audio assets that are packaged in a .zip file. When first run, the app downloads these assets from a server (S3 in our case), unpacks them, and stashes them away on the SD card. This is a typical use case for apps such as games, which have [...]

By default, most Android apps re-orient themselves when the user rotates the screen on their device. Many app developers don’t need to think about this at all for their apps, but for the ones who do, you need to understand what Android is doing behind the scenes. Not only is it important for implementing screen [...]

In my previous post, I discussed the pros and cons of the various means of keeping the screen alive in Android, focusing mainly on the need for sandbox permissions in your application’s AndroidManifest.xml file. In this post, I’d like to further elaborate on the “shortcut” techniques to allow you to keep the screen alive, without [...]

Our Android app has a need to keep the display alive, as the target audience is young children who may not be able to re-awaken a device that goes to sleep. In Android, the general method to do this is to use the PowerManager class to create and manage a Wake Lock.  But this method [...]