Samsung BDC - how we participated in the competition and won it
Finally, the Russian stage of the Samsung bada Developer Challenge, which lasted for 6 months, was completed. And we are happy to share with you the news of victory, our project Toozla took the main prize!
In this post we will talk about the work and problems that have been encountered during this time. Here: habrahabr.ru/blogs/mobiledev/108733 already wrote about the negative experience. Well, we must really carefully read the conditions of the manufacturer. And we must understand that the primary function of the phone is to work as a phone in the network of the provider, and not as a computer. Here: habrahabr.ru/blogs/development/108801 we wrote about some technical problems of development.
Bada Developer Challenge included 9 parallel contests: global and local . The rules did not prohibit participation in two competitions at once, which we did. The application for the first stage was necessary to develop and test in the simulator. The version for the first stage, quite simple in appearance, but fully functional, was developed in about three weeks, in the evenings, after the main work. The application went to contests in mid-August, and the tedious waiting began.
The end of September brought good news - Tuzla passed to the second stage in the worldwide competition. Moreover, a close study of 80 competitors, also passed to the second stage, showed that the chances of taking some kind of prize are quite real. About a third are games, a third are standard applications like a flashlight, a compass, etc., several ports of already known applications from other platforms, and a maximum of 2-3 fresh ideas. So the attitude to the competition from “ought to participate” has changed to “it’s quite possible to win” . A week later, the Russian competition arrived in time - a pass to the second round was also received.
')
By the way, according to our feelings, about 1,500 applications were filed in the global competition, and about 40 in the Russian one. We did not find any official figures on this matter. Apparently, it was difficult for the Russian judges: only 7 applications were announced as winners, and 15 were planned (and the budget was 15 ... Ay, Samsung! Increase the payment by 2 times! Meat is not reported to the tigers!)
According to the rules, all participants of the second round received by telephone, firstly, as a prize, and secondly, for testing on live iron. The phone should have been sent from Korea by courier. He was sent to participants in all countries except Russia. Referring to problems with Russian customs, Samsung gave us a phone through the Russian representative office only a month later, a few days before the deadline for the second stage. It is clear that this forced us to simply buy a phone in the store. Although, thanks to the Russian Samsung, we soon received a second test phone, as participants in the Russian competition. Not for sale engraved on the phones.
Live phone added its own surprises. Periodically, on real hardware, the application crashed just out of the blue for unknown reasons, sometimes up to rebooting the phone. At first, this caused a slight panic, but then, noticing a similar behavior among “monsters” such as Janedx.Map, and even in native applications, we calmed down a bit. Flies out, yes, but not more often than others.
For the second stage, it was decided to add a map and completely redo the appearance, add a player and other beautiful things. The bada SDK already includes control for a card that uses data from the deCarta service, and of course, we all implemented it pretty quickly. However, it was not so easy. According to the rules of deCarta, if you use this service, then you have two options:
Since we didn’t like the second one, it was decided that we would just make the application a paid one, with some kind of symbolic price. Despite the fact that, according to the rules of the competition, the application should be available for free within a month after the end of the competition, Samsung promised to agree with deCard that the application will not touch the advertising applications.
However, a week before the deadline comes a message that, they say, I'm sorry, we could not agree with deCard, insert a quick advertisement. I had to pick up a special library for advertising, after which the size of the application grew from 700K to 4M. This is especially offensive, since one of the special categories was encouraged by the small size of the application.
From a fairly large piece of functionality, we generally had to give up. As planned, when we went to the landscape, we had to draw a beautiful shape, with additional functionality, as compared with the usual mode. Everything would be fine, but when you switch to the landscape, the application just crashes, without explaining the reasons. And, judging by the logs, it fell not in our code, but somewhere deep inside, and this was due to the fact that the form was rather heavily loaded with graphic elements. In general, after three days of unsuccessful struggle, a week before the deadline, this functionality was ruthlessly cut out (along with several others, not so important).
The adjustment to the second stage took about three weeks, of which five days were full-time.
One of the conditions for the passage of the second stage was certification Samsung Apps. As planned by the organizers, all applications - the winners were to appear in the store immediately after the announcement of the results.
The certification went surprisingly smoothly, in two weeks with just one reject. Pre-combed thematic forums, with catching standard errors, which were
And to all this, a week after the first appload, we received 5 bugs, 2 of which made us seriously strain ourselves. Gradually, all problems were resolved and we received the status Ready for sale.
In this post we will talk about the work and problems that have been encountered during this time. Here: habrahabr.ru/blogs/mobiledev/108733 already wrote about the negative experience. Well, we must really carefully read the conditions of the manufacturer. And we must understand that the primary function of the phone is to work as a phone in the network of the provider, and not as a computer. Here: habrahabr.ru/blogs/development/108801 we wrote about some technical problems of development.
Bada Developer Challenge included 9 parallel contests: global and local . The rules did not prohibit participation in two competitions at once, which we did. The application for the first stage was necessary to develop and test in the simulator. The version for the first stage, quite simple in appearance, but fully functional, was developed in about three weeks, in the evenings, after the main work. The application went to contests in mid-August, and the tedious waiting began.
The end of September brought good news - Tuzla passed to the second stage in the worldwide competition. Moreover, a close study of 80 competitors, also passed to the second stage, showed that the chances of taking some kind of prize are quite real. About a third are games, a third are standard applications like a flashlight, a compass, etc., several ports of already known applications from other platforms, and a maximum of 2-3 fresh ideas. So the attitude to the competition from “ought to participate” has changed to “it’s quite possible to win” . A week later, the Russian competition arrived in time - a pass to the second round was also received.
')
By the way, according to our feelings, about 1,500 applications were filed in the global competition, and about 40 in the Russian one. We did not find any official figures on this matter. Apparently, it was difficult for the Russian judges: only 7 applications were announced as winners, and 15 were planned (and the budget was 15 ... Ay, Samsung! Increase the payment by 2 times! Meat is not reported to the tigers!)
According to the rules, all participants of the second round received by telephone, firstly, as a prize, and secondly, for testing on live iron. The phone should have been sent from Korea by courier. He was sent to participants in all countries except Russia. Referring to problems with Russian customs, Samsung gave us a phone through the Russian representative office only a month later, a few days before the deadline for the second stage. It is clear that this forced us to simply buy a phone in the store. Although, thanks to the Russian Samsung, we soon received a second test phone, as participants in the Russian competition. Not for sale engraved on the phones.
Live phone added its own surprises. Periodically, on real hardware, the application crashed just out of the blue for unknown reasons, sometimes up to rebooting the phone. At first, this caused a slight panic, but then, noticing a similar behavior among “monsters” such as Janedx.Map, and even in native applications, we calmed down a bit. Flies out, yes, but not more often than others.
For the second stage, it was decided to add a map and completely redo the appearance, add a player and other beautiful things. The bada SDK already includes control for a card that uses data from the deCarta service, and of course, we all implemented it pretty quickly. However, it was not so easy. According to the rules of deCarta, if you use this service, then you have two options:
- If you have a paid application, then everything is simple, you can simply use this control, and Samsung will pay for its services from the 30% that it leaves to itself.
- If you have a free application, then you are obliged to insert advertisements from a carte in a form with a card, and without any hope to receive some income from them
Since we didn’t like the second one, it was decided that we would just make the application a paid one, with some kind of symbolic price. Despite the fact that, according to the rules of the competition, the application should be available for free within a month after the end of the competition, Samsung promised to agree with deCard that the application will not touch the advertising applications.
However, a week before the deadline comes a message that, they say, I'm sorry, we could not agree with deCard, insert a quick advertisement. I had to pick up a special library for advertising, after which the size of the application grew from 700K to 4M. This is especially offensive, since one of the special categories was encouraged by the small size of the application.
From a fairly large piece of functionality, we generally had to give up. As planned, when we went to the landscape, we had to draw a beautiful shape, with additional functionality, as compared with the usual mode. Everything would be fine, but when you switch to the landscape, the application just crashes, without explaining the reasons. And, judging by the logs, it fell not in our code, but somewhere deep inside, and this was due to the fact that the form was rather heavily loaded with graphic elements. In general, after three days of unsuccessful struggle, a week before the deadline, this functionality was ruthlessly cut out (along with several others, not so important).
The adjustment to the second stage took about three weeks, of which five days were full-time.
One of the conditions for the passage of the second stage was certification Samsung Apps. As planned by the organizers, all applications - the winners were to appear in the store immediately after the announcement of the results.
The certification went surprisingly smoothly, in two weeks with just one reject. Pre-combed thematic forums, with catching standard errors, which were
- Lack of various warnings when the application starts (like, “we use your coordinates to show ads, do you agree?”, Or “Do you have sound muted, do you really want to continue without sound?”
- The correct operation, for example, the volume buttons (and in the bad, the processing is left to every application, unlike the same android. If you do not process them, the sound will not be adjusted).
And to all this, a week after the first appload, we received 5 bugs, 2 of which made us seriously strain ourselves. Gradually, all problems were resolved and we received the status Ready for sale.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/108807/
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