Another update for Situations is now available for Android and Sailfish OS!
This release contains following changes:
- Improved Activity condition by adding possibility to adjust confidence & interval values
- Improved SMS Reply action by adding possibility to reply also to SMS messages
- Fixed situation state handling after manual timing
- Added battery optimization check
- Added clearing of “NOT” state when last condition from a group is removed
- Improved permissions checking on app startup
The last two items apply for Sailfish also.
Apparently the worst stability problems on Android were fixed in the previous release. However, there has been growing amount of feedback telling that Situations is getting shut down while running in the background - especially on Android 9 devices.
It seems that this is mostly because latest Android and/or different manufacturer versions of Android have started forcefully suspending or even killing background apps to optimize battery life. For this reason, the app now asks the user to disable battery optimization if it is enabled.
There is still a problem though. Some manufacturers have implemented their own mechanisms & settings for battery optimization. And that means, to keep Situations running smoothly, users of those devices must instead (or additionally) find & adjust the relevant settings from the system Settings app manually.
Another thing worth mentioning is that this may be the last release of Situations in Google Play that supports SMS features. At least for a while. Some time during last year Google decided to introduce a new policy preventing most third party apps from using SMS & call log features in Google Play distributed apps. The deadline for removing those features is closing in fast and despite our numerous attempts to get Situations approved for exception, Google seems to be determined to think Situations is not a “Device Automation” app that would be eligible for such an exception. Who knows what they (or their bots) are thinking…
Anyway, SMS features will continue to be provided even after this release, but they will only work if the app is sideloaded from our website. So updating the app will be become a bit more inconvenient for anyone wanting to use the SMS features. And of course Google’s dictatorship may at some point decide to somehow break also sideloaded apps. Or do some other more or less evil stuff. We will of course continue trying to convince Google to make an exception with Situations…
Br,
Pastilli Labs