Android beta features come and go: Where is the scroll and redo during record?

[[Member Brai…]]

Hi! some weeks ago they added a new feature, probably in the beta program. 

You could scroll during record , back to redo a section, and forward to jump over parts where you don't have to sing.

Now I see that they didn't apply that improve to the production version, but ... Why did they remove it also from the beta?

[[Member sZHM…]]

Yeah. I loved that feature. It was so useful. One thing I noticed in the android beta is unlike other apps, the update pattern is beta -stable - beta - stable 🤷🏻‍♂️ why can't we just receive only the beta updates though.

I'm so frustrated with smule sometimes tbh. Development for iOS is so good while the android version is so behind. It's not like android VIP is free too! We are paying too, smule 😑

[[Member Paol…]]

They're working on it to be back, last I saw about it. 

[[Member RamK…]]

It is Sad that Android phone users get treated like second class citizens, considering more than 70% of the Worlds population does not use Apple iPhone. Wonder sometimes if Apple owns Smule ?

Ram

[[Member open…]]

The problem is that Apple is a closed system with a few known devices using the same software (iOS) and identical or similar hardware – all from ONE vendor. It’s so much easier to develop software for that.

Android works very differently. The software comes from Google – which doesn’t know ANYTHING about the actual hardware it will be used with (unless it’s also a Google phone). The phone makers can put in any hardware components they want and the phone companies all modify the Android software in one way or another. As a result, the Android platform is a mess. For a karaoke app, Smule needs to pull together audio and video in perfect sync, but it doesn’t know what camera your phone has or how your specific Android device processes audio and video … That’s why there are these problems with sync and monitoring. It’s not like Smule doesn’t want it to work on Android. It’s the platform itself that makes it almost impossible to set this up properly in a way that would just work for every Android user around the world. 

[[Member Brai…]]

I agree , android can be pain for developers, mostly with this kind of apps that are very hardware dependent.

There is, for example, an issue with sustained notes being supressed in android, that seems to be due to the phone noise cancelling system. As there are thousands of android hardware models, developers cannot fix it, at least easily or in all the models.

[[Member Brai…]]

Anyway, I was hoping that entering the beta program I would get all the beta features, but as someone said, they seem to be beta1 - stable1 - beta2 - stable2 ...  only that beta1 can add some features that don't appear in the rest of subsequent versions, either stable or still beta.

I supose we will have to wait.

[[Member RamK…]]

On 9/14/2018 at 3:44 PM, opentype said:

The problem is that Apple is a closed system with a few known devices using the same software (iOS) and identical or similar hardware – all from ONE vendor. It’s so much easier to develop software for that.

Android works very differently. The software comes from Google – which doesn’t know ANYTHING about the actual hardware it will be used with (unless it’s also a Google phone). The phone makers can put in any hardware components they want and the phone companies all modify the Android software in one way or another. As a result, the Android platform is a mess. For a karaoke app, Smule needs to pull together audio and video in perfect sync, but it doesn’t know what camera your phone has or how your specific Android device processes audio and video … That’s why there are these problems with sync and monitoring. It’s not like Smule doesn’t want it to work on Android. It’s the platform itself that makes it almost impossible to set this up properly in a way that would just work for every Android user around the world. 

You could not have explained it better. Thank you. I was considering switching to a new iPhone and was shocked to hear that the latest iPhone costs over Aud $2000. Perhaps I should start looking for a second phone just for Smule and get a second hand iPhone.

Cheers

Ram