Amazon/Nokia X/generic support?

[thors]

Hi, I'm a happy owner of a Nokia X device. I built TextSecure from source and was able to install it, but not to register it, since I naturally don't have any google account associated to the phone and no google play account.

Are there plans to support the Nokia push services as well? How about Amazon devices (tablets)? Is someone working on this? If not, I might have a bit time next weekend and try to work on it, but I have to admit that I currently have no clue about TextSecure internals and I'm not an experienced Android developer.

[JavaJens]

Check out issue #1000 I haven't found the time yet to look into this, so if you have time this is great!

[thors]

Thanks for the reference to #1000. I will have a look if there is anything I feel I can do. I didn't look much into the source code yet, and as I mentioned I'm not experienced in Android development. Anyway, I'm curious enough to look into it :-) So, I understand correctly that the server already supports web-sockets? Is there any further documentation? The documentation I found didn't contain show any server domain names etc. y further documentation? The documentation I found didn't contain show any server domain names etc.

[JavaJens]

The server name is configured in the client, Release.java. However the server there has WS disabled. So you need to host your own, but Moxie said this shouldn't be too hard. But I guess for the basic WS support you can work with a simple WS endpoint (like periodically broadcast a message, this will give an error in decrypting but who cares?) If you look into the android-websocket-example I referenced, this should give you a good starting point.

[thors]

Thanks, I will have a look; however, besides definitely being an education for me, will this be of practical use? If I get everything implemented, is there any gateway to the "official" server, or are Google- and Android- users connected to the WhisperSystems infrastructure unavailable to me? Or does WhisperSystems plan to enable it as soon as clients are available? And is there any information available, why websockets are disabled on WhisperSystems infrastructure?

[JavaJens]

Well, the official server should support WebSockets, it is just not turned on. The desktop client will use these, so they will be enabled at some point I guess. But I don't know the exact plan here, furthermore one of the issues that needs to be solved is how to register non-mobile clients, e.g tablets.

Maybe @Moxie0 can give some insight?

[thors]

For the authentication, WhatsApp used to send an SMS with a verification code to a given phone number. If WhatsApp couldn't read the SMS automatically, I think it was possible to enter the code manually. So if sending the SMS is ok (e.g. cost wise), the user just has to start the desktop/tablet application and give his phone manually. He just needs some simple-phone next to himself, to get the SMS and enter the verification code to the application manually.

What I don't know is how these services prevent abuse. If I enter the phone number of some person I don't like, I might be able to annoy them with nightly SMS. Maybe it would sufficient to define a minimum retry interval for each phone number, and maybe an interval between unsuccessful registration attempt and next attempt from same IP address.

[JavaJens]

TextSecure currently does the same, but I think the registration is coupled to the phone number+GCM/APN. I think we should wait for @Moxie0 to give his input on how this is handled with the desktop client?

[JavaJens]

I've pushed a PoC that connects to a local WS server. Maybe you can take this as a starting point? And I think this issue is basically a duplicate of #1000 so maybe @thors you can close this one?

[thors]

@JavaJens I think, there are two different approaches. Implementing web-sockets would work for any (Android-) phone, but there are some open questions, and I agree it's a duplicate which should not be discussed here. OTOH, support for Nokia Push services should be straight-forward (there are some tools available to help porting apps), and I'd be happy if this could be added in short terms. So, I'd like to keep this issue open and wait if I can get information, if support for Nokia Push is planned and if I could help to implement it client-side. If Nokia Push is rejected, we can close this issue as well.

[JavaJens]

For reference: http://developer.nokia.com/resources/library/nokia-x/nokia-notifications/porting-google-cloud-messaging-to-nokia-notifications.html

This might help in porting, however I think that as resources are limited this will most likely not be implemented soon (just my 2cents). Moreover do I believe that supporting every possible combination will become tricky, thats why I like the WebSockets idea. Nevertheless I would love to corrected on that :)

@thors A more short-term solution might be this: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/nokia-x-rooted-and-loaded-with-google-apps-play-store-and-google-now-launcher/Don't know if it is an option, just stumbled across that today :)

[rhodey]

support for tablets is covered by #614 and support for TextSecure without GCM (websockets only) is covered by #1000. if these two issue were resolved then TextSecure should work on your Amazon/Nokia X, so closing.

[pangyuehung]

I think it's a different issue, but filed for the task of publishing to other preloaded app stores: #10770