In case you missed the news earlier this morning, we've just pushed out the public-beta launch of Skritter's Android app and we're pretty excited about it. Details on how to download the app can be found on the Skritter blog here:

http://blog2.skritter.com/2014/06/skritter-for-android-beta-release.html

If you've got any questions or comments about the app please be sure to let us know. This is a golden opportunity to help make Skritter's mobile support better than ever, so don't be shy with your comments and feedback. Drop us a comment, send us an email, and more importantly, enjoy (finally) being able to study Skritter on your Android device!

This is probably not a bug or anything, but where is the eraser?

You can erase a character by swiping up (which also applies to the iOS app and Flash version).

Thanks! I've found something that might be a bug though. Every time my screen goes into power saving mode and turns off, the skritter app freezes into a white screen of death and you have to restart it.

Wow, finally I know why my characters sometimes disappear!

Where should we leave feedback during the beta?

I haven't been able to use the beta at all on a Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.3.

- Startup (before I have a chance to login) is stunningly slow
- After 15 seconds, my screen turns off to save power, which causes the problem mentioned by DaXia
- If I manage to get past that (1 or 2 minute wait), the Skritter creature eventually gets replaced by a subtly off-white blank screen (I think I recognize the "paper" background)
- A while after that, I once got the buttons asking me to register or sign in. But tapping either button did nothing.
- Now every time I try I get to the blank paper screen but the buttons never appear.

I was using my phone to type earlier so I could not write a more detailed feedback, but Kai Carver did it for me. I have the exact same issues as him.

I am using Samsung galaxy S3 with the latest android version 4.3

How do I hide pinyin?

@DaXia and Kai Carver, That sounds like our application wrapper is failing to properly load. Can you check and let me know which version you're running. The latest version is 0.0.1450 and can be found from on the Google Play download page.

You can leave feedback just about anywhere, forums, google community or the github page and it'll find its way to me.

@mcfarljwtest1
Hi! I downloaded mine yesterday from the google play beta tester thing and my version is 0.0.1431

So I guess I should uninstall it and download it again?

"You can erase a character by swiping up (which also applies to the iOS app and Flash version)."

Is there a place where these tips are published?

Also, in general the app is slow on my device, very slow. I do hope effort will be made towards that in the future. Otherwise it is working well for me so far.

@chip256

We don't have a "tips" section yet. So many changes have been taking place inside of the app that we haven't had time to make that available. I'll make a point of highlighting some things in the Beta Tester community sometime today:

https://plus.google.com/communities/111086959218179130279

In fact, that might be the best place to post questions and feedback so everyone can see it.

Could you let us know which device you're using? Right now we're targeting the app to devices running Android 4+ but it's hard to know which devices will run the app well since Google Play Store is available on 5000+ devices. We'll be making lots of performance enhancements in the coming months, so hopefully that will fix some of the speed issues you're having!

-Jake

@Daxia you shouldn't have to redownload the app, just check to make sure you've got the most recent version.

To check for updates you'll want to use the following path:

Play Store > My Apps >Installed > Skritter Chinese

That should show you if an update is available for download or not.

Hope that helps!

hi @mcfarljwtest1 and @SkritterJake

I checked, my version is 0.0.1450 and it's still doing this:
1. Skritter creature for a minute or two
2. blank paper background forever after
3. white screen if I put app in background

... But wait! I just tried one more time, this time putting the app in the background while the Skritter creature was displayed... And now I was able to login and it's doing the initial download.

So the problem seems to have gone away now.

Wonderful to have the app up and running. Used it on my hour commute this morning. It looks great and for the most part works well on my HTC one M8. Here are some things that might interest you:

1. Every so often (3 or four times in the hour)it froze and I had to re-open the app.

2. Worked fine in portrait and then in landscape but would not resize when I tried to go back to portrait. Had to log out and in again to fix this.

3.

My third point is that when you open and then close the character info window it ends the study session and you have to press study again.

my problem hasn't gone away, it just comes and goes.

It seems to help to put the creature in the background, right after starting the app. When I bring the app back to the foreground, it goes straight to the blank page of paper, and, if I'm lucky, starts doing something.

I'm still trying to get past the initial download. I seem stuck at 1004.14 KB, but I'll give it more time.

@Kai Carver: We're looking into this-- a few other users have reported the same behavior as well. Thanks for the heads up! There's an open GitHub issue at: https://github.com/skritter/skritter-html5/issues/229

@Chrishilton: After awhile of studying system resources may be high causing the app to freeze, which is something being worked on. Regarding the portrait mode, do you mean that after switching to landscape and back to portrait, it stays stuck in landscape mode?

I bought my Samsung phone in China. For some reason doesn't allow Google Play on the device and I can't link the device to a Google Play account.

Is there an .apk file that I can download to install it?

@padgy, Yeh, I've bought a few devices in China and unless I pay extra for the export version they don't come equipped with Google Play. We've been mirroring our apk updates here:

http://html5.skritter.cn/files/

The limitation on it are the expansion audio files won't be available and you'll have to manually check back to see if the upload dates are newer. In the future we'll try implementing a more automated solution. Hope that helps!

Hello and thank you for the android version. I am completely new to skritter. I have had a Chinese Forums voucher. Thank you

I have tried the beta android version, got it up and loaded word list (NPCR) started to study and found I didn't understand exactly what was on the screen.

Having completed writing there is a choice of a red X, green equals sign, green tick and blue tick. What do they mean?

Is there any where newbies can get some basic info about skitters tools etc.

Thank you
Shellarc

I'm also a Chinese Forums newbie. I can use the website version on my laptop fine. I've downloaded the app onto my Moto-G, and I get the creature, then I get the 'study/lists' window. I click study, and instead of clues about a character and a blank screen to write on, I get the character. If I touch it, a random stroke in red or green appears, and I get the X, =, tick choice. I've just reinstalled, and get the same thing.

@Shellarc: We're working on a guide/FAQ that will go through how to use the app and usage tips, it should ready soon! The icons you mention are the grading buttons: X is "wrong", wavy equal sign is "so-so", tick mark is "correct", and the blue tick is "too easy". These will schedule words/chars at different intervals depending on how you grade them, based on how well you know them.

@billleverett: Does this happen when the app is the only application running on your device without any others in the background?

"Does this happen when the app is the only application running on your device without any others in the background? "

Yes

Okay, I've figured that out. Had to uninstall first, then re-install, now it's working.

@billleverett, glad it's working. It sounds like we when upgraded to a new runtime that in some cases it requires a complete uninstall first. That shouldn't be the case for future updates.

I would love to try it but I'm behind the great firewall and can't join the google community. Is there any way around that?

Hey Yizichen, right now there are two ways to get up and running with the beta from China.

1.) Use a vpn or proxy so that you can access the Google stuff required to join the community and become a tester.

2.) Download one of the builds directly and install it on your device. You can find the files here:

http://html5.skritter.com/files/

**Installing the direct download build is the same as the build in the Play Store except it doesn't support audio at this time.