Inappropriate bundling of Showmee with Sipdroid

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The bottom line is that Showmee is a separate product from Sipdroid.  They 
share no user functionality and there is no user integration between them.  
They deserve separate titles, separate descriptions, and separate ratings and 
comments.  You can't fundamentally change what a product is and then push that 
onto users with no warning.  That's what you did, in effect, by bundling the 
two and pushing it as an automatic update in Android Market.

Your intentions in bundling Showmee might have been entirely honorable.  You 
might have simply been trying to deliver new functionality to a wide number of 
users, for free, with a minimal added package size.

But it *looks* like you are trying to exploit Sipdroid's large installed user 
base to give a new product an artificially accelerated toehold into the market, 
while attempting to mask the products' different purposes and different levels 
of quality.  It *looks* like iptel is forcing an unwanted product onto people, 
so as to receive some future financial gain.  It surely doesn't help that 
Showmee is of beta-level quality.

Further compounding the issue is that no automatic mechanism was provided for 
migrating to the new stand-alone Sipdroid Base package.  The provided 
export/import mechanism is cumbersome and incomplete - for example, failing to 
transfer all settings if the user happens to have more than one line configured.

The space savings in bundling the two products is negated by the fact that 19 
out of 20 Sipdroid users would never use Showmee, and made further irrelevant 
by the fact that a stand-alone Showmee package would be a reasonable size at 
under one megabyte.

In public relations, perception is reality.  You can explain your intentions 
all you want, but that won't make the problem go away.  Just look at the 
comments in Market: 9 out of 10 new comments are from people furious about what 
you've done.  You've lost people's trust.

I filed this as a bug because you did the wrong thing, and you need to fix it.  
Showmee needs to be removed from the Sipdroid package and offered as a separate 
package with a beta-level designation.  This needs to be done as soon as 
possible, both to save face and to limit the fallout from people who will have 
already transitioned to an irrelevant Sipdroid Base package.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by bala...@gmail.com on 29 Mar 2011 at 9:14

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I see your points making you worry but there are is a techical aspect speaking 
for the inclusion into one App. Thanks for opening a factual discussion here. 

The way Linux/Android works is that it runs every App in a separate process. A 
lot of RAM is already consumed by the Dalvik runtime environment. Then 
incrementally some more RAM is used for the Java code portions actually being 
used. Code portions not activated only consume a few KB flash, but almost no 
RAM.

That's why only a very few Apps can stay resident on a device, depending on the 
total RAM available. ShowMee and Sipdroid both need to stay in background to 
register for incoming calls, or for picking up incoming video messages.

So if a user wants both I think it is required to have them both programs in 
one App. That's also why other IM/SIP clients have the functionality built-into 
one App. Otherwise the program would get kicked out of memory often, devices 
would get unstable, ...

So there were only two options:

1) Create a new integrated package Sipdroid VideoSMS. Existing users of 
Sipdroid would have to switch to if they were interested in the new feature.

2) or add the new feature to the existing Sipdroid, and add a new pure Sipdroid 
Base package.

I decided for the second because I thought people would be interested in Video 
IM features. People also liked the live video conferencing in Sipdroid, and 
always request lots of additional features, and it's completely free (like the 
PBXes service which is also very popular).

Now that people rebel one could think of option 1) might have been better, but 
doing the switch now would mean, robbing the new feature from users' devices 
again. There are already thousounds of users communicating over ShowMee, and 
they seem to love it although they have not yet rated it in the Market.

Original comment by pmerl...@googlemail.com on 30 Mar 2011 at 12:31

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Points taken.

As this is largely a problem of perception, I think the root of the problem is 
that Showmee appears to users as a completely separate app, with a separate 
user interface and a separate icon in the app drawer, when in fact it is a 
sub-component of Sipdroid running in the same service and the same memory 
space.  

I would propose getting rid of the new icon in the app drawer, and instead make 
VideoSMS accessible from the Sipdroid main interface via an on-screen button or 
the menu.  You can provide users the option to create a home screen shortcut 
that takes them straight to the VideoSMS activity.  One step further would be 
to drop the 'Showmee' name and instead refer to it as Sipdroid's VideoSMS 
component.

Simply getting rid of the icon in the app drawer will solve most users' 
objections.  Out of sight, out of mind.  If this had been done from the 
beginning, I think there would have been no need for the "pure" app option.

Original comment by bala...@gmail.com on 30 Mar 2011 at 5:06

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And if Sipdroid adds new intents for VideoSMS, providing the user a setting to 
enable or disable them would be nice.

Original comment by bala...@gmail.com on 30 Mar 2011 at 5:09

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OK, I will work on it.

Original comment by pmerl...@googlemail.com on 30 Mar 2011 at 6:25

• Changed state: Started

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VideoSMS has become optional with update 2.2.1. All icons/intents don't show up 
before going thru a new register button.

Original comment by pmerl...@googlemail.com on 1 Apr 2011 at 7:31

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Thank you for the fast work.  I think a lot of people will appreciate this 
update.

Original comment by bala...@gmail.com on 1 Apr 2011 at 7:47

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i keep getting an error that "camera is already in use"
if i try to delete the showmee app is it going to destroy my sipdroid account?

Original comment by burpa...@gmail.com on 18 Apr 2011 at 8:35

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In ShowMee preferences you can disconnect your phone from ShowMee. This has no 
side effect on Sipdroid.

PS: Which phone model/OS version are you using?

Original comment by pmerl...@googlemail.com on 18 Apr 2011 at 8:37

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htc eris (adr 6200) firmware 2.1

Original comment by burpa...@gmail.com on 18 Apr 2011 at 8:42

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and thanks, btw!

Original comment by burpa...@gmail.com on 18 Apr 2011 at 8:43

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Original comment by pmerl...@googlemail.com on 21 Jun 2011 at 12:27

• Changed state: FutureRelease

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Original comment by pmerl...@googlemail.com on 24 Jun 2011 at 10:02

• Changed state: Fixed