kaios development

hello world! it's been a short while, but i want to update you all on something!

i finally got another phone for testing my kaiOS apps!

before, i've just been testing on one phone, the Nokia 2720 Flip, which is one of the higher end phones with a back button and 512mb of memory. now, i got something from the extreme low end; a Blu Zoey Smart.

this phone has no dedicated back button and only 256mb of memory, and it shows; it freezes every 30 button presses or so, and applications crash if i play music in the background. however, some people still use this phone, so it's good to test applications on it.

i only have developed a few apps, however testing on this new phone gave me some insight on developing applications.

one example is this: not all phones have an email client! this was a surprise to me, because i thought all kai os phones had an email client. however this Blu does not. i limited my Gensokyo Radio app to email sharing only, and i published it to the store, so... yeah, that's inconvenient.

another example is the fact that the screens are smaller! i should have known this from the beginning, however i didn't think it would get that small. i adjusted my font sizes in my apps accordingly.

my last example is this: the volume changer behaves differently between devices! on the Nokia, you can change the volume using the rocker, or by pressing up and down. calling navigator.volumeUp() from the ArrowUp key event will increment the volume by one. on the Blu, doing that will increase the volume by two. it seems that the KaiOS people will fix that for you if you publish it. this bug happens on my direct unfiltered code, but not on my published reviewed code.

anyway, that's all.

btw check out my app on the KaiStore called "baka⑨player" if you're a fan of Touhou doujin music (and you own a phone running KaiOS).