Some users have reported that the scrolling speed with arrows is too fast, find the balance and add an option in the settings to change it

As of now, because I wanted to keep BaldPhone FOSS, and didn't include crashlytics analytics, there is no way of knowing how many users downloaded BaldPhone, and how many actually use it as their HomeScreen.

There should be a way of counting those numbers.

Ideas I had so far:

Using an open-source analytics tool

pros

• Free until 1000 monthly active users
• Simple API which will be easy to integrate

cons

• 1000 monthly active users for free is nice, but if it'll pass then $120 per month base (the price for 10,000) is something I won't be able to afford for a non-profit project

Send each user as a crash via acra & tracepot

pros

• Already implemented in BaldPhone so will take no time to implement
• If tracepot is closed another backend can be used instead (with payment, sadly)

cons

• tracepot is limited to 30,000 crash reports per month, and if this line is crossed there is nothing to do
• The company is closed and may close the free tool anytime
• Not made for this purpose

Create my own simple server

pros

• most reliable solution
• no limit of users

cons

• Can take a lot of time, which I barely have
• Needs constant maintenance
• Money which comes from my own pocket

Would be glad to hear your suggestions and opinions!

Improving bald and regular status bars as mentioned by @DJCrashdummy :

i also kind of like to get remembered of low energy (even while using an app) by highlighting the usual status bar in red... it would be nice if the "group-colour" of the "baldphone-statusbar" would also change, for people who never display the usual status bar and don't have a status LED.
i'm still not sure if this should be an extra setting, or triggered automatically when the usual status bar is hidden. 🤔

• Not translated to other languages other than Hebrew and English
• Week starts from Sunday

Have suggestions\bugs related to Internationalization? Please add a comment below :)

Know another language and interested in translating? check out this link and feel free to contact me at [email protected]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

• Stock calling screen can be difficult for some people to use, because the layouts and functions are differently positioned, so it depends on the phone manufacturer and i have seen some launcher apps for elderly implement their own calling window or separate calling app for that.

Describe the solution you'd like

• When you call a number, a custom BaldPhone screen opens instead of stock, where you easily press turn on speaker, turn on earphone, mute, end call, and so on easier to use buttons than stock.

Android 9 devices are not being counted as users,
Something to do with Volley, check the following links up:

1. google/volley#235
2. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53927708/why-volley-library-not-working-on-android-9api-28-where-as-its-working-fine-on

At the meantime, BaldPhone only has a few video tutorials, all of them in Hebrew.
BaldPhone supports showing to different locales different videos, and only needs those videos.
I'll create video tutorials in English and Hebrew, but if anyone can create some in other languages, It'll be great :)
I'm recording the videos with this cool app

• the maps button seems to be hard-linked to google maps because when not installed, it just shows "An error has occurred!" instead of opening other installed map-apps like SmartNavi, OsmAnd, Maps, PocketMaps or ZANavi/Navit resp. the default map app.

• the google button seems a kind of a waste of space (and camouflaged advertising) to me. instead a generic button named "web-browser" or "internet" and simply opening the default browser (with its default startpage resp. no special site) would make much more sense.

• i'm not happy with the whatsapp icon either... not everyone (especially not older people) uses web-messengers or this particular service. - this causes real confusion!
  i've no concrete idea to completely solve this problem for now, but probably a generic icon with "web-messenger" and a setting to choose your own app like e.g. Riot.im or any other would be at least reasonable.

Issue for uploading temporarily apks for tests and stuff

Adding tests to the project may make code contributions faster.
Links:

1. https://developer.android.com/studio/test
2. https://github.com/marketplace/travis-ci

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
There's a dot in the Messages card when receiving a SMS. This is not possible on devices running Android Go (feature limited by Google).

Describe the solution you'd like
I'd like to know if a workaround is possible.

Describe alternatives you've considered
My grandmother used to having this big launcher. I removed it to install Baldphone.
I don't know how it worked but the card of Messages was red instead of yellow when she received messages. What could be the workaround used by this alternative launcher to know when there's an unread message?
For the time being I will display a popup through Macrodroid.

Thanks.

it's not a really big issue because you can use 00 (or 011, 010 etc. in some areas) as a workaround for international numbers, but it is kind of unfortunate if you have to rework all saved phone numbers with the dialer/number pad of your default keyboard to make them work in all areas of the world.

I have some alarms on my phone that are usually turned off, sometimes I need those alarms for one time, and using the BaldPhone interface, I have to create them all over again.

My suggestion is to add an option (or maybe even make it the default) for one time alarms not to be deleted after activated, but instead, be turned off until the user manually activates them or manually deletes them.

Currently, the official site for this app is at https://sites.google.com/prod/view/baldphone
and has one translation at https://sites.google.com/view/baldphone-il/home.
Adding additional translations would be difficult, since google sites doesn't allow just anyone to clone a website.

If we host on Github Pages, then the site will be at the same place where the development happens. Anyone can write Pull Requests, merged by maintainers.

See also #1

Describe the bug
No Activity found to send SMS from a Contact.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to Contacts
2. Select a Contact
3. Click on Message
4. See error An error has occurred!

Expected behavior
To be able to send SMS from a Contact instead of having to open Messages then select a conversation or enter a new contact.

Phone(please complete the following information, it can be found in the settings under Technical Information):

• API Level: 28
• BaldPhone Version name 11.3.2 v78

Additional context
Logcat: Balphone.txt

Describe the bug
I have a Pixel XL running LineageOS 16.0 (20190822-nightly), and on the second screen (the screen with "Settings", "Internet", "Maps", etc.), upon tapping on "Internet", I am receiving the following error message: "No matching app was found!".

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Expected behavior
Given that I tap on the "Internet" button, and I have a default browser app installed and set as default, then my default web browser app should open, so that I can surf the web on my phone.

Screenshots
See above.

Phone(please complete the following information, it can be found in the settings under Technical Information):

• API Level: 28
• BaldPhone Version Name: 11.4.2 / Version Code: 83

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

• The stock messaging (SMS) apps range visually and functionally, or can be harder, complicated to use for elderly.

Describe the solution you'd like

• A built in Messaging app that is simple.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Simpler user interface, simple to click buttons...

I would like to change the default apps on home screen. It is not obvious how to do that.

BaldPhone's keyboard needs to improve. It's one of the most important parts of BaldPhone yet it's quite bad compared to other parts of BaldPhone. These are the points needed to be addressed (Feel free to add more):

• Add more languages
  • French
  • German
  • All? Perhaps parsing xml files containing only the keys data and creating the views accordingly may be better instead of creating layouts (but can take tons of time so don't start unless someone requests)
• Make "Enter" key match specific input, whether its search or save or done
• Make Height better match display OR Make keyboard always horizontal

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
To make it easier to clean up my Recent call history, it would be nice to have a "Clear All" button. Right now I have to use Androids default dialer to clean up the history.

Describe the solution you'd like
Given that I am viewing the "Recent" call history screen,
When I want to clean up all of the history records,
Then I would like to be able to press a button that would clear out all of my recent call history without have to use the default Android dialer to do so.

Additional context
Not sure if this is the best place for it on the screen, but just to give you an idea of what I mean:

i've got a little idea for a "nice-to-have", which could help to easier distinguish the 3 different kind of calls in the history.

simply colour the arrow-icons with the usual colours:

• red for missed calls
• green for answered (resp. "received") calls
• blue for outgoing calls (as neutral colour, because it is not 100% sure if you reached someone or not)

Describe the solution you'd like

Please Set The Ability To Stop Keyboard Changing Back To Foreign language After Changing To English And Phone Reboot And Also Add English Video Tutorials.

Have you thought about publishing baldphone to F-Droid?

First, congrats to this project! Just watched your vid, and I'm impressed! But I have a little concern:

For privacy aware users, access to sensitive/personal data doesn't go together well with Analytics (remember: all parts of your app have access to everything your app has access to) – especially not with closed source analytics such as Crashlytics. Would you consider a build variant that comes without Crashlytics? If you feel you really need something like that, could you at least use something open source like ACRA?

Your app looks very promising – and I'd love to recommend it (I'm often asked for apps like this). But I can't do that with good conscience if the privacy of the users is compromised (which I feel it is with proprietary trackers; no offense meant to you, but only Google can say what the library really does).

Toda rabba! And keep up the good work!

PS: If you provide such APKs, I gladly include your app with my repo, available for privacy aware users outside the Google Play Store – and with the corresponding build variant in your gradle, help you to get it into the official F-Droid catalogue, where thousands of 100% open source apps can be found.

• when creating a new alarm, a button (beside "Only once") to activate all weekdays at once - like available at the "Pills" - may ease the things for some people.
  BTW: is there a way to reorder the weekdays based on the localization automatically, because a bunch of regions exists, where the week does not start on Sunday, but Monday (or whenever else)?

• sorting the alarms at the overview by their next time they will ring (and not by their creation time) may be reasonable.
  i can imagine that some may ask for an alphabetical sorting... but if, i would just make this an optional feature and not the default.

• when no name for an alarm is chosen viewing "Alarm" at the overview (or even setting it as its actual name?) as it is done for a "Timer" may help to avoid confusion.

• BaldPhone crashes when a "one-time alarm" occurs while you are viewing the alarm screen and then try to edit the already deleted alarm (funny: turning the already deleted alarm on/off "works" without any complains).
  the best solution would be to also refresh the overview (as it is done when you manually delete an alarm) after an alarm was deleted automatically.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Missing information about the signal, mobile data, alarm, Wi-Fi...

Describe the solution you'd like
Additional information next to the clock for example.

Describe alternatives you've considered
To add an option to show/hide the system statusbar.

Thanks.

Using Travis and Fastlane together to take screenshots and test the app at the same time!
More tests will be added to Travis, which will take screenshots using Screengrab and automatically upload them to GitHub every time a commit is pushed or a PR is merged.

This way there will always be updated screenshots, in all locales, and all parts of the app will be tested.

Things to remember:

1. Just like happened until now, most probably most of the crashes will occur because of UI change and not because of real bugs, so separate the tests to different files so it'll be easier to follow stack traces and know fast where the bug happens (the stack trace of instrumented tests is a nightmare). Maybe just open activities (populate them via ADB/espresso with information before, obviously) and take screenshots immediately.
2. Keep the current ones (Create at least one test which actually clicks on button)
3. Make sure the emulator works properly with high resolution first!
4. You can populate stuff like alarms and pills via code directly so no need to mess with clicking and stuff
5. Multiple Languages (data needs to be populated correctly)
6. TIME - Travis is limited to 50 minutes, and it's also quite a nightmare to wait 50 mins before merging PRs and releasing releases, maybe use a different CI together with Travis, one fast and one slow? Maybe only do the screenshot thing to releases? kinda loses the point of checking each and every screen every code change
7. Landscape too
8. Different font sizes
9. Different themes
10. Implement 7, 8, 5, 9 in using inheritance in the Instrumented Tests
11. Mabye add a flavor or something to these tests that will not have anything random at all

@roybogin do you have anything to add? Any suggestions?

Info: https://docs.fastlane.tools/getting-started/android/screenshots/

When you click on an app in the app drawer, it opens a small window, where you can press "uninstall" or "add shortcut" by accident.
It's way simpler if clicking an app just opens it and the uninstall/shortcut options are somewhere else.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

• There in no visible text box in the "Send feedback" menu, so people won't assume to click anywhere to write feedback.

• There is nowhere said that the feedback must be english, otherwise, you will get a ton of technical gibberish text.

Describe the solution you'd like

• A visible text box to click for inputing the feedback

• An information box saying: The feedback must be in English language.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently my Mother who has been using the BaldPhone app on her phone for several months has been having difficulty knowing that she has new voicemails. Yes, there is the general notification, but it would be useful to have a button that would immediately dial her voicemail.

Describe the solution you'd like
Given that I am on the Home screen,
When I want to check my Voicemail,
Then I would like to press a shortcut button (like "Messages") called "Voicemail", that would open up the system dialer and immediately call my voicemail, with the speaker phone option toggled on and the dial pad showing by default. (the dialpad is so that I can easily enter my voicemail PIN)

Given that I am on the Home sceeen,
When I have an unheard voicemail in my mailbox,
Then I would like to have a indicator showing over the "Voicemail" shortcut icon (just like "Messages"), so that I know I have a voicemail that I need to listen to.

Describe alternatives you've considered
On the "Dialer" screen, perhaps there could be a "Voicemail" button there? But still need to have a more obvious indicator on the Home Screen that indicates an unread email.

Additional context

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

• The number input field in Dialer app is not there, so it's harder to see what you typed

Describe the solution you'd like

• A box around the phone number as you type.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
No.

Describe the solution you'd like
Given that the User is using the Dialer to dial a number, and the "Accessibility Level" is set to "Regular level", when the User enters the phone number by pressing a number on the dialer keypad, then the User will hear the DTMF touch-tones sounds for each number entered.

Given that the User is using the Dialer to dial a number, and the "Accessibility Level" is set to "Medium level", when the User enters the phone number by long-pressing a number on the dialer keypad, then the User will hear the DTMF touch-tones sounds for each number entered.

Describe alternatives you've considered
N/A

Additional context

• DTMF sounds example
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b99h3S7YpHk

this are little suggestions i consider as helpful and would be nice to have, but some of them (especially the first) may be too much of a "(hidden) function" for some people and confuse them, so i guess they just should be optional: (though i'm not sure if active/inactive should be the default.)

• i'm soo used to tap on the clock/time at my normal launcher to get to the time-/alarm-app... and i guess this would be a nice function for baldphone too. - and if you are thinking further to a possibly more flexible arrangement of buttons/functions of the main screen, it can free one slot for other functions/buttons.
  see #52

• i also kind of like to get remembered of low energy (even while using an app) by highlighting the usual status bar in red... it would be nice if the "group-colour" of the "baldphone-statusbar" would also change, for people who never display the usual status bar and don't have a status LED.
  i'm still not sure if this should be an extra setting, or triggered automatically when the usual status bar is hidden. 🤔
  see #53

• the animation of the bell in case of pending notifications is really nice 👍, but how about additionally colouring the bell (as it is done with the torch and somehow at low energy with the battery) for an immediate response? - this will also make it a breeze for people with parkinson disease (and no notification LED) to recognise pending notifications.
  see #56

EditTexts in BaldPhone may cause confusion, as can be seen in the screenshots.
Following material design rules, will make things better

1. Have over 130 apps installed (I have 153)
2. Scroll down on the app screen (it always crashes before I get to the bottom)

As of writing this issue, BaldPhone supports landscape orientation on most activities.
With that, 10 activities still don't support landscape orientation.
To know which, search for android:screenOrientation="portrait" in the Manifest

While most people don't use landscape orientation, it's still nice to have, especially with the new foldable devices, which may be suited for BaldPhone's users.

Describe the bug
When using a big font texts overlap.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Increase the size of the font (and maybe your DPI)
2. Create a new alarm
3. See error

Expected behavior
Line breaks shoudl help. The problem is worse on the phone of my grandmother (higher DPI).

Screenshots

Phone(please complete the following information, it can be found in the settings under Technical Information):

• API Level: [e.g. 29]
• BaldPhone Version name [e.g. 11.3.1]

this is part of a follow up from #51:

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

at the "usual android status bar" there are the various notification icons on its left side and some devices even have a notification LED... but without one of them and just baldphone, it is not that easy to tell. - the animation of the notification bell in baldphones status bar is cool, but its not that easy to catch (especially if you are a little bit shaky or worse... keyword parkinson disease).

Describe the solution you'd like

• thus the idea is to (additionally) colour the notification bell to instantly and easily see if there is a notification pending.

Describe alternatives/additional ideas you've considered

• a more advanced behaviour/setting may be interesting... in case of you have persistent notifications an option to set the number of notifications to start colouring the bell can be handy.
• you can even add a second optional & adjustable limit to change the colour (and hence indicate something like "too much" notifications).
  -> lets say default starting colouring the bell yellow with 1 notification and with 10 notifications getting red.
• and the cherry on the cake would be a smooth transition from the first colour to the other. - so you have the possibility with a fleeting glimps to get a clue, wether it is just 1 notification or rather 9 (in case of my example).

Reminder to myself to add recent calls indicator

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

• For example, Assistant doesn't work in all countries (like ours) and elderly in other countries mostly don't know english (which the assistant is based on)

Describe the solution you'd like

• Edit function to add the possibility to replace/change/move all buttons on home screen, not just WhatsApp

Android Q is almost here and with it new privacy change, which affects apps compiled for older versions too.
BaldPhone should change its behavior regarding:

1. [Launching activities from the background without user interaction. (Alarms and Pills)](launching activities from the background without user interaction.)
2. New limits on access to files in shared external storage. (Photos, Videos, Updates)

https://app.leanboard.io/board/cc9c1768-69e3-491b-8a19-628a119ea067

For example "erase" could be red, "call" could be green, "backspace" could be orange, so it's easier to identify, instead of all the buttons being the same color.

Improving the clock as mentioned by @DJCrashdummy :

i'm soo used to tap on the clock/time at my normal launcher to get to the time-/alarm-app... and i guess this would be a nice function for baldphone too. - and if you are thinking further to a possibly more flexible arrangement of buttons/functions of the main screen, it can free one slot for other functions/buttons.

Describe the bug
Can't get results with the Assistant.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open "Assistant" fromi the main screen
2. Tap on the big Android icon
3. Say "Test" or "What's the weather like today?"
4. See error
   The toast message either uses the string "___app_was_not_found" or "please_repeat_that".

Expected behavior
Launch the web browser for a search or open the requested app.

Screenshots

Phone(please complete the following information, it can be found in the settings under Technical Information):

• API Level: [e.g. 29]
• BaldPhone Version name [e.g. 11.3.1]

I can't change package names (and neither can I sign), so I'd need signed APKs with a different package name to start with. You could use a build variant for that, which basically is identical to the "standard one" with the exception of using a different package name (I'd suggest appending .beta to the real one, so com.bald.uriah.baldphone.beta – Gradle has an automatism for that even, applicationIdSuffix (see the example on the linked page), so you'd just need to provide the suffix and it would join the two on build; F-Droid's build server doesn't support that currently, so only use it for the beta build, please). A "product flavor" (described on the same page) would work as well, whichever is easier for you.

Then we need to take care with the tags/releases, to have the F-Droid build process ignore the betas (and mine ignore the "real releases"). Update check at F-Droid must use %c currently (tag name corresponds to versionCode) – so for the betas, you could use %v instead (tag name corresponds to versionName). Easy to adjust on my end (just let me know when it's ready), and no adjustments needed for the official repo. Note that for version compare, my update checker will ignore letters (so e.g. 1.0.2-alpha3 would be considered newer than 1.0.2-beta1 because 1.0.2-3 > 1.0.2-1 – you have no idea what funny tag names people come up with making that necessary).

Originally posted by @IzzySoft in #8 (comment)

• at least the default number of a contact should be used for a SOS call!
  maybe it is worth to think about, if the button should be tied to a number and not just to a contact...
  BTW: although you can also enter additional numbers in the BaldPhones own contact editor, i don't see a possibility to set a default. - have i overlooked something or is this a bug?

• an interesting feature i saw somewhere is a countdown timer after hitting the initial SOS button.
  but this needs some additional configuration settings like the duration, what should be done... who should be called, more than one or all 3 "emergency numbers" in a different staggered arrangement by time... or even sending predefined SMS etc.

• also an interesting feature i saw, was to start this process resp. show the SOS screen (and start an eventually configured timer) by just shaking the device for absolute emergencies.
  but i'm sure this also needs additional configuration options (and extremely high defaults if active at all) for duration and intensity of shaking to not start it by accident!

Hey, I am trying to set up this project but I got an error given below:

Android resource linking failed
C:\osd\BaldPhone\app\build\intermediates\merged_manifests\debug\AndroidManifest.xml:218: error: resource string/authorities (aka com.bald.uriah.baldphone:string/authorities) not found.
error: failed processing manifest.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Hi Uriah! First of all a big thumbs up for this very nice app. My dad (over 80) is loving it.

But we have a little problem. Adding NEW contacts directly via browser logged into the Google account works fine. Just a few seconds later the NEW contacts will be shown in the BaldPhone Contacts.

But deleting contacts via Google account will not synchronize with BaldPhone Contacts. The removed contacts stay forever in the BaldPhone Contact list. Sure, we can remove them also inside the BaldPhone Contacts, but this is not what we want.

Inside the original Google Contacts app the deleted entries are also deleted.

Can you agree with this behaviour?

Kind regards from Berlin/Germany.