Device filter on Android Market not working correctly

Judging by a flood of support emails, it appears that people who previously had their ARMv6 device correctly filtered out of the Android Market, now see and download our games only to find out they won't install. This started a week or two ago.

The devices are clearly marked as 'excluded' on our Market admin panel, and the Manifest file clearly requires ARMv7.

Is anybody else experiencing this issue?
thx
-marc

 

The filters definitely aren't bulletproof - I had a similar issue where I had blocked the Galaxy S device family completely... except for one SKU in Canada somehow was being ignored by the filters, so I was getting frequent e-mails from canadian users who couldn't download the app due to it being over the 30mb samsung limit. This is only one of many problems the market has simply downloading apps at all - the android market's delivery mechanism is junk and needs an overhaul.

 

It is definitely still a bit 'rough around the edges'...

 

If its not one thing, its another. My favorites are the ones where google checkout breaks, and won't attempt to authorize a person's credit card. Several times I've had e-mails to the effect of "why is my order stuck on 'authorizing'"... in which case you often have to manually kill the order or it will remain in limbo forever, with the user unable to purchase the game or cancel/retry the order themselves.

 

It seems like new problem with Android Market:

"Users of ARMv6-based devices like HTC Wildfire, HTC Legend, LG Vortex (VS660),
Huawei Ascend, etc. keep sending in their complaints that they see Firefox in the Android Market, and the installation fails on their (unsupported) devices."
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=669189

"...I went to install two games from android market this morning and have not ben able to install them. Ive searched for them on market before and have ben unable to find them but today i was. The down completes, but then it says installation unsuccessful. "
http://androidforums.com/lg-optimus-v/368642-toruble-installing-couple-games-market.html

"The phones that I received the most e-mails about are: LG Optimus V and Samsung Galaxy Prevail"
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=41c234df2a7e2837&hl=en

 

The interesting is that there is such a riot on this matter on Android where its partially broken (but partially also not, its a matter of stupid per country - territory SKUs which in the end means that you need 5-10 SKUs per handset, see the xperia play with like 7 of them, optimally you do what EA, Gameloft etc do too, check the device at startup basing on its name and refuse to start, pointing them to auto refund. That way they are within the auto refund timeframe and topic is eaten.) but barely any note on the fact that Apple has no filtering at all thanks to iTunes selling the apps too completely ignoring any present or not present device ...

 

The fact that it could be even worse on Android doesn't really make it better
At least iTunes (on the device) won't let you download an app if the device doesn't match processor or OpenGL requirements.

 

iTunes not checking if your device(s) are compatible with an app before allowing you to purchase it is a total non issue. I've never been contacted by anyone complaining about it in over two years of doing business on the App Store. Meanwhile, I've been contacted 3 times today by people who bought Zombieville on an incompatible android phone due to the market filters failing.

My biggest gripe with the android market though is a total lack of communication when things go wrong. If you try to install an app designed for 3GS+ devices on an old iPod touch, you'll get an error message stating that its not compatible. If you try to install Zombieville for android on an LG Optimus V, the whole phone will simply power down. I think that says it all.

 

Hello guys...

Can someone please help me how to setup my manifest to requires ARM7?? I can't find how to do it..

thank you in advance,

Bruno

 

Build Settings > Player Settings > Other Settings > Configuration: Device Filter - ARMv7 only.

 

hi Cleyden..

sorry I forget to mention that I want to do it editing the manifest.xml.. because our project is build using eclipse..

thanks..

Bruno