Android Central App Changelog

News
By Phil Nickinson
last updated

This is the home for the changelog for all versions of the official Android Central app (and the other Mobile Nations apps) as published in Google Play.

v2.8.5

v2.8.3 - 2.8.5

  • Release notes now show on update, and are available anytime in the settings menu. (v2.8.5 fixes the fix that fixed the crash for that)
  • Added some items to the NavHeader to make navigation easier
  • One secret feature that will reveal itself at the proper time (Hint: Google I/O is near!)

v2.7.7

  • Updates for TrustManager fix.

v.2.7.2 (Production release April 11)

  • Updates the look and feel of search results, for a more enjoyable experience, particularly when viewed during the day. Seems better at night. It's pretty good at dusk, too. Also at dawn.
  • Removes lib

Find previous changes at http://phon.es/achange.

v2.6.7 (Production release March 14)

  • SEARCH. IS. HERE. Get results for everything on the blog, forum threads, and individual posts.
  • Fixes emoji crash on Samsung devices
  • We've also rejiggered the image retrieval library to better retrieve images.

v2.6.2 — (Beta release Feb. 4, Production release Feb. 8)

  • Adds app invites — now you can tell your friends about this awesome new Android app you've been using!
  • Improves app indexing for Google search, Google Now and more!
  • Improves Google Analytics, which helps us make the app even better!

v2.5.0 — (Beta release Jan. 22, 2016)

  • Tweaks to app indexing in preparation for search.

v2.4.0 — (Beta release Jan. 19, 2016)

  • Adds more discrete events to Google Analytics, so we can get a better feel for which features aren't being used.
  • Improves accessibility for the comments FAB.

v2.3.7 — (Beta release Jan. 5, 2016; Production release Jan. 8)

  • The floating action button for comments now magically disappears at the end of an article.

v2.3.6 — (Production release Dec. 30, 2015)

This rolled up a number of beta releases.

  • You'll now need to accept terms and conditions and privacy policy at first launch. (Thanks, lawyers!)
  • Fixes list/story position on rotation
  • Updates widget style and adds link to the index. (Tap Lloyd)
  • Moves comments and new forum threads to a floating action button.
  • Remove Google Play Services (and along with it 3 permissions!)
  • Updates for analytics
  • Removes multidex.

v2.3.5 (Beta release Dec. 29)

v2.35 — REMINDER: This is the beta track. There are some gremlins.

  • Adds Google Analytics back in
  • Fixes list/story position on rotation

v2.3.1 (Beta release Dec. 15)

  • Fixes links opening inside the app when they shouldn't. (2.3.1)
  • Adds another FAB. (2.3.0)
  • Gives more love to the widget. (2.3.0)
  • Some UI fixes for dialogs. (2.3.0)

v2.2 (Beta release Dec. 9)

  • You'll now need to accept terms and conditions and privacy policy at first launch. (Thanks, lawyers!)
  • Moves comments and new forum threads to a floating action button.
  • Remove Google Play Services (and along with it 3 permissions — booyah!)
  • Updates widget style and adds link to the index. (If you see issues at first, reboot.)
  • Removes multidex.

v2.1 (Production release Nov. 24)

  • Fixes image upload for forums. (Finally!)
  • Adds floating input text. (Snazzy!)
  • Shows refresh animation during initial load. (Okely dokely.)
  • More style changes for forums. (Design things.)
  • New colors and less purple. (You animals.)

v2.0.4 (Beta release Nov. 13, Production release Nov. 17)

  • Styling changes for the forums to highlight quoted text and replies.
  • Fix for crash viewing full-screen video.
  • Moves Account and Settings buttons in the NavView. (Likely will change again later.)

v2.0.3 (Beta release Oct. 29, 2015, Production release Oct. 31)

  • No more duplicates in subform lists.
  • You can once again actually do things with wallpapers.
  • Overflow and share menus are readable again.
  • Compatibility for Android 6.0 Marshmallow — including the new runtime permissions scheme.

v2.0 (Beta release Oct. 13, 2015, Production release Oct. 14, 2015)

  • When we say refresh, we mean refresh. We haven't added any new functionality. That's coming up in the next phase of development.
  • Material purists will notice that things aren't perfect. We know. A bigger change to the code will come.
  • But c'mon. This is so much better, and long overdue.
  • Feels faster.
  • Known bug in share menu style.

v1.8.4 (Alpha release July 2, 2015, Production release July 5, 2015)

  • More work on those awful, horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad link crashes.
  • Support for Samsung Multiwindow support is now supported!

v1.8.3 (and 1.8.2) (Production release May 29, 2015)

Catching up on this full changelog after bringing a new developer on board. We've done a few small visual tweaks and some crash fixes, including when opening comments after opening an article from another source (Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Also fixed a crash that would occur when rotating the phone.

v1.7 (Beta release Nov. 20)

  • Ability to save articles for later viewing (This is an early implementation and might well change at some point, including the ability to save from the index view. Currently, you save from the overflow menu in a story, and see your saved list from the drop-down in the index view. See the pics included in this post.)
  • Improved connection performance and reliability
  • Updated featured article styling
  • New app icon, because apparently that was a thing
  • Other bug fixes

v1.6.1 (Beta release Nov. 5, 2014; Production release Nov. 6, 2014)

  • Integrated ComScore analytics SDK (one permission change required for this: ACCESS_WIFI_STATE)
  • Rebranding for Windows Phone Central App to Windows Central
  • updated gallery parsing code to be more robust
  • Removed "talk mobile" section from the app
  • Fix for visiting the comments of some rich content articles causing a crash
  • Fix for crash when uploading some forum attachment images
  • Fix for minor issue relating to article not loading/connectivity
  • Improvements to performance & memory use

v1.6 (Beta release July 30, 2014; Production release Aug. 4, 2014)

  • Adds deep linking support for our forums, but not for links coming from Chrome. We'll update for that in a later build. 
  • Updates Flurry and Quantcast analytics to conform with Google's new ID policies. (Details: http://phon.es/audq).
  • Other various bugfixes. 

v1.5.4 (Production release May 15, 2014)

  • Discovered a bug in Android that led to the widget using way too much data. We've fixed it.
  • Also reworked caching for better runtime memory usage. Should feel snappier now.
  • Memory error fixes for older/low-end devices.
  • Fixed non-YouTube links that were trying to open YouTube.
  • UI improvements, including some specifically for the Galaxy S5.

v1.5.3 (Beta release May 7, 2014; Production release May 8, 2014)

  • Adds ability to post images to the forums. 

v1.5.2 (Beta release April 1, 2014; Production release April 2, 2014)

  • Adds ability to view posts' accompanying image galleries. (Look for the image icon in system bar, or arrows on images.)
  • Adds article swiping (yes, finally!).
  • Adds walkthrough for those features.
  • We show you a lot of images, so we've added a "clear cache" button in settings to free up your storage space.
  • Adds support for Twitter card/Google app indexing.
  • Wallpapers now give the option to download to your device.
  • Bugfixes

Find previous changes at http://phon.es/achange

v1.4.6 (Beta release Feb. 27, 2014; Production release Feb. 28, 2014.)

  • Removed the (potentially) NSFW wallpaper sections from the app at the behest of many of our readers, as well as a few other app stores we submit to.
  • Fix for wallpaper sizing when set as desktop background.
  • Fix for some images being stretched in article view.
  • Back by popular request: You can now see how many hours or days ago a story was published.
  • Better handling for deeply nested article comments (no squeezed unreadable comments).
  • We now display inline images in article comments.
  • Fixed issue with article comments sometimes being unselectable, keeping folks from replaying.
  • Various updates for recent sever-side updates.
  • Fixed quote handling in forums (from new version of Tapatalk).

v1.4.4 (Production release Sept. 26, 2013)

  • Fix for crashes.

v1.4.3 (Production release Sept. 5, 2013)

  • Performance and stability improvements.
  • Added option in the settings menu for screen transitions — fade, zoom or none.

v1.4.2 (Production release Aug. 25, 2013)

  • More stability fixes.
  • Moved the font size options to the settings menu, instead of in the article overflow menu.
  • Bugfixes.

v1.4.1 (Production release Aug. 22, 2013)

  • Fixed up rare crash on login bug
  • Small bug fixes and tweaks

v1.4 (Beta release Aug. 18, 2013, production release Aug. 21)

  • New app icon.
  • New visual design with pull to refresh: If you're using the default light design, you'll notice this first thing. It's a little more subtle on the dark theme.
  • ZOMG COLORS IN THE MENU! If you like 'em, great! If you don't, they're just colors, man. It's cool. 
  • Switched to a drop-down menu for the various sections. (Among other things, makes it easier for us to add sections on the fly. It's different, but it's easy enough to get used to.)
  • Added a dedicated Talk Mobile 2013 section.
  • Improved performance and stability: Always a good thing.
  • Added in support for javascript widgets in articles (Polldaddy polls, etc.)
  • Interaction improvements to Talk Mobile articles.
  • Ability to edit and delete article comments (within the same 15-minute window we impose on the web side)
  • Podcasts download to internal "Podcasts" folder: That means they'll be picked up by MediaScanner, and so you can listen to them in your favorite music app.

v1.3 (Beta release July 14, 2013, production release July 16)

  • Added forum search
  • Added forum thread view options (go to first unread post vs. first post)
  • Integrated the new Google navigation drawer — be aware that we'll implement some performance improvements to it in the next version. It's good now, but we can make it better.
  • Integrated YouTube Android Player API (and look for the "fullscreen video" option in the settings, if that's your thing)
  • Support for Talk Mobile articles
  • Added the "Get it on Google Play" badge and links to match the blog look, removed the old button. (This will now work for just about anything on Google Play — not just apps.)
  • Added support for Quantcast and Flurry analytics — this required the addition of the "Access Network State" permission. We've used Quantcast on the traditional web side of things forever (http://www.quantcast.com/androidcentral.com) as sort of a transparent look at traffic. Flurry gives us an anonymous look at how and where our app is being used, and it'll help us make the app better. More than 300,000 apps use Flurry analytics. You can find out more at http://www.flurry.com/flurry-analytics.html.
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes

v1.2.5 (Released June 17, 2013

  • Fix for read and unread status in forums
  • Widget now picks up theme preference
  • Added refresh icon to forum thread lists (latest, participated, etc)
  • Fix for login state persistence issues
  • Fix crash in forums when touching header banner

v1.2 (Released June 11, 2013)

  • Introducing a dark theme! Find it in the settings menu, under "Night mode." Might well become the default at some point.
  • Read/unread status for forum threads. Its subtle, but it's there.
  • Change font size in articles. (Look for it in the overflow menu for now.)
  • Improved widget refresh
  • Improved article scrolling
  • Other small fixes and tweaks

v1.1.1 (Released May 16, 2013)

  • Fix widget update errors

v1.1 (Released May 15, 2013)

  • Widget support! Get the latest news posts on your home screen or your lock screen!
  • Landscape support throughout the app. Because everybody gets a little sideways now and then.
  • Support for Google Play store links in articles. (Hint: Look for the Google Play logo at the top of the story.
  • Ability to use the pull-out side menu from all screens. (YES!)
  • Other small bug fixes and tweaks. As in any good update.

v1.0 (Released May 7, 2013)

  • Initial release
Phil Nickinson
Phil Nickinson