Tag Archives: Google

Brick Game version 4.0.4 released

I’m happy to announce that a new version of Brick Game is now available on Google Play

This release focus on stability, performance improvements and Android 13 support.

Brick Game - Classic puzzle game with falling bricks where you remove lines and gain points

Get it on Google Play

Bricks Game’ is an interesting classic puzzle game with falling bricks where different types of shapes continuously fall from above. You should place bricks in order to have full lines with blocks. The goal of Falling Bricks game is to score as many points as possible by clearing horizontal lines of blocks. Lines are cleared when they are fully filled with blocks and have no empty spaces. Each removed line gives you 100 points. When playing the game, you rotate the falling bricks or move them, left and right.

Check upcoming brick in the top right corner of the screen and plan for it. Complete lines to gain points and raise the level. When you pass a level the blocks start to fall faster and the game becomes a real challenge. If the bricks land above the top of the playing field, the game is over.

Brick classic game features:
✅ Different level of difficulty – easy, medium, hard, expert
✅ Customizable controls
✅ Endless mode
✅ Beautiful patterns
✅ 11 different shapes of bricks
✅ Increasing speed and level ↗️
✅ Pause/Continue game
✅ Best score
✅ Easy to play and pleasurable game for all ages
✅ Easy to learn and fun to master game play
✅ Play game without internet and no time limit
✅ Play free game anytime and anywhere

Get it on Google Play

GSM Signal Monitor & SIM Info version 1.6.13 released

I’m happy to announce that a new version of GSM Signal Monitor & SIM Info is now available on Google Play

This release provides better eSim experience and adds support for Android 13.

GSM Signal Monitor & SIM Info

GSM Signal Monitor notifies you when you have no GSM signal or mobile data.

Get it on Google Play

Ever wanted to call someone, but your phone has no GSM coverage?

Or you are living / working in a low signal area?

‘GSM Signal Monitor’ monitors the phone (or tablet with SIM card) signal strength and alerts you when you are out of service or in a low signal zone.

No signal / low signal alerts include: voice notifications, vibration, notification on the device screen and playing a ringtone. You can personalize how you get notified in the app settings.

‘GSM Signal Monitor’ can also notify you when the signal is restored, your mobile data is lost you are in a roaming area.

The app also provides information about device SIM cards such as phone number, voice mail number, SIM Card Serial number (ICCID), Subscriber Id (IMSI), mobile operator info and network type. This SIM card info can be easily shared by tapping on the share button or copied in the device clipboard.

‘GSM Signal Monitor’ logs every signal related event in its notifications log. The notification log keeps information when the GSM signal is lost, restored or low. It also logs information when the mobile data is lost or roaming is active. You can configure what’s logged in settings. The log can be exported in CSV, PDF and HTML formats.

Each logged event contains location and additional details about device and network states such as: network operator, network type, data connection state, roaming state, ram usage, battery temperature, battery state (charging/not charging) and battery level at the time of the event.

You can monitor your signal strength as it changes dynamically from the app main screen or in the notification area.

Features:

• Notifications when the signal is lost / restored
• Notifications when you are in a low signal zone (available as in-app purchase)
• Log events when data connection is lost or device enters roaming
• Event location and additional details
• Customizable log export in CSV, PDF and HTML formats. (available as in-app purchase)
• Detailed SIM card info
• 4G (LTE) signal monitoring
• Dual / multi SIM devices support (requires Android 5.1 or newer)
• Quiet hours (the app can be configured to suppress its notification during specified time period)
• Real time information about the GSM signal strength and quality in decibels (dBm)
• Low battery shutdown (GSM Signal Monitor will stop when device battery is low, the app will auto start again when the battery is sufficiently charged)
• Starting the app when the device starts
• App shortcuts
• Day Night theme with dark and light modes
• Simple/enhanced service notification styles and configurable behavior on how you get notified when actively using your device.
• Great number of configuration options

GSM Signal Monitor is NOT a signal booster app!

GSM Signal Monitor web page: https://getsignal.app/

Get it on Google Play

Automating Google Play Store reports with ‘gsutil’ and Windows PowerShell

Why (feel free to skip)

As Android developer I have various mobile devices (phones, tablets, watches) with all Android version starting 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich, API 14) up to Android 12 (L, API 31). Those devices accompanied by very detailed test scenarios help me ensure best possible user experience 🙂

Android test devices

As Android developer I have various mobile devices (phones, tablets, watches) with all Android version starting 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich, API 14) up to Android 12 (L, API 31).

When prepping release for an app, all test cases for that particular app are performed on each device. For each Android version I keep track of active installs and user rating. Applying that data in the test scenario. This helps me focus more on particular set of for ex. unhappy users running specific OS version.

Below is a screenshot of a test scenario for one of my apps: GSM Signal Monitor & SIM Card Info.

GSM Signal Monitor & SIM Card Info test scenario

GSM Signal Monitor & SIM Card Info test scenario

Each Android version has number of active installs and rating. Going to Google Play Store dev console and collecting this information by hand is somehow tedious job, so I decided to automate it using ‘Google Cloud Storage Util‘ and a bit of Windows PowerShell scripting.

How

Our task is to fetch Google Play store monthly reports for app installs and ratings by OS version, filter them and get data that can easily be copy pasted in the ‘Active Installs‘ tab of the test scenario.

1. Cloud Storage bucket ID

Google Play reports, beside dev console can also be accessed via Google Cloud Storage bucket associated with your developer account. You can go to “Download reports”, pick the report type you want and select “Copy Cloud Storage URI” next to it.

Google Play Cloud Storage URI

The url will look like this

gs://< bucket_id >/stats/installs/

where < bucket_id > will be your actual developer account cloud storage bucket. Remember this bucket id. We will be using it later.

2. Install gsutil

Google provides GSUtil for using cloud storage from the command line. Head over to https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/gsutil_install#expandable-1 and follow the installation instructions.

We will be utilizing the gsutil.cmd assuming that the script is available in system PATH.

Next we need to authorize gsutil to access our cloud storage data. Follow the instructions on how to Authenticate stand-alone gsutil. For ‘project-id’ use the project ID of the app you want to get reports for. I’m interested in retrieving reports for GSM Signal Monitor & SIM Card Info app so I will be using it’s Cloud Storage project id.

Cloud Storage Project ID

If everything is setup correctly, opening command prompt and typing “gsutil help” should produce result similar to the screenshot below:

gsutil help command output

3. PowerShell magic 🙂

Script below will fetch installs and ratings reports from Google Play for specific app for the current month. Will get the last date available in the install report, filter both install and rating reports by ‘last available date’ and strip the reports from rows / columns we are not interested in. It will iterate over the active installs and will try to match installs with the ratings.

Replace $bucketId and $appPackageName with your cloud storage bucket id and your app package name.

Reports fetched from Google Play and the final output will be saved in the current working directory.

Upon execution you will get a report for your app active users/ratings by Android version, based on the data for the last date available in the install report nicely opened in your default text editor.

Script output: Active users and ratings.

P.S: Enable column selection mode in Notepad++ to get only the numbers. Use the arrow keys or your mouse while holding Shift + Alt.

P.S1: More info on how to retrieve various reports with gsutil here.

Feel free to modify the script to suit your reporting needs 🙂

Copying Cyrillic URLs in Google Chrome and Firefox

Using Google Chrome, I encountered strange bug affecting the copying and pasting of cyrillic urls.

When pasting, the non ASCII characters in the Url are converted to Punycode.

Performing some tests revealed that the same behaviour is present also in Firefox.

Punycode produced by Google Chrome and Firefox

Punycode produced by Google Chrome and Firefox

Doing some research led me to Issue 68718, unfortunately marked as WontFix stating:

Links on Wikipedia itself are a red herring, as comment 50 notes -- they're escaped in the page source.  The actual issue here is demonstrated by the link in comment 0.  We escape URLs when copying them.  This behavior matches Firefox 4 (by default) and Safari 5, though not IE9.

We added this behavior on  issue 2820  to fix a variety of problems in languages like Japanese.  Because those problems resulted in users unable to navigate to the pasted links, whereas this issue seems to be solely about cosmetics (in that escaped URLs are ugly and hard to read), preserving that behavior change seems like the more important thing to do.

Workarounds

Few things can be done if this issue is affecting your day to day usage of Google Chrome…

  • Before copying the URL add any character at the end of it, then erase it. After this operation the copied URL will preserve its structure not producing punycode when pasted.
  • Use the COPY URL extension.
  • Use a different browser. Microsoft Edge on Windows and Safari on OSX are producing the expected results.

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