If you were among the first to join our Private Beta, then you have just received our Android client for ON. You are currently using version 0.17.8. There are a whole bunch of things you can do, but equally there are a number of limitations and some known bugs. Many of these things will be changed before we get to release 0.18.0 on Dec 6th, and some of them will be corrected in intermediate releases.
With your version, you can:
- Import all contacts from your phone (you will be able to import contacts from other sources as soon as we open the website on 2 December)
- Synchronise them over the air
- Create worlds, and associate your contacts with them
- Change your availability and selectively redirect your contacts to voicemail, and send them an “apology” sms when you cannot answer.
- Link up and message other ON users
- See all your sms / call / ON message exchanges with your contacts in a conversation view.
Limitations
- TLS connection not yet activated, so your passwords are still visible. The servers, however, are protected via an MD5 hash to protect you against unauthorized access.
- We have removed the landscape view for sorting contacts by worlds as a memory problem often caused crashes. For the time being, you can associate a contact with one or more of your worlds by editing the contact and clicking on the world names, or clicking on the world title and choosing “add contacts” in the menu button. This should be back in the next release.
- Entering contact points (eg your own phone number or email) for discovery is currently done within the “world” “preferences”. This is cumbersome, we know, and will be changed before the release 0.18.0, when you will be able to enter all your contact points by clicking on the “me” section in the middle of your homescreen.
- Facebook is not yet available. You can currently add twitter (currently via the web) and see the feeds by contact, but Facebook discussions are taking longer…
- The mechanism we use for allowing real time status updates (XMPP) disconnects regularly, especially if you are using it via wifi and you receive a call. For the time being, drag down the status bar and click on icon that says “ON disconnected” and this will often re-connect you. If this doesn’t work, you have to stop ON. This can either be done via a utility such as terminator, or selecting settings>applications>manage applications>ON and then choosing “Force Stop”. Clicking your homescreen button will then relaunch ON, hopefully connecting you to the server again. Note that this “disconnected” message applies to the real time sharing of status and ON messages, it has no impact on syncing. So you can sync even when it says disconnected, and the fact that you are syncing does not mean that you are connected to the XMPP server. Again, next release should make much of this more intuitive.
- Syncing problems with over 1000 contacts. This is because Android goes to sleep after 20 minutes. You can disable this by going to settings>applications>development: stay awake (when plugged in). It normally takes around 1 minute for every 100 contacts during the first sync, and then less than a minute total for all following syncs.
Known Bugs
- A regression in the last build means that contacts you place in “my circle” on the Android will disappear the next time the phone syncs. If, however, you place them in your circle from the web, they will stay there.
- Apology SMS may not be sent correctly to non-local numbers (being checked)
