It's unfortunate to hear you had a bad experience with our SDK :(
We've actually fixed a few ANR deadlocks in this last release [1], as well as a few others in the releases since 1.8.0 [2].
If you can supply reproduction steps, we'd love to be able to fix this issue as I'm sure you're not the only one experiencing it. In addition, we're more than happy to accept fixes as contributions :D
I think the guy on the ticket didn't really understand what I was saying. I'm happy to provide any extra info necessary (what I can remember anyway).
From looking through the code, the issue still appears to exist. [1] is called on the Main Thread. It eventually calls to a synchronized block [2]. [3] is called from a background thread and uses the same synchronised lock.
--> Main Thread + Background Thread using same lock == Trouble
One other annoying issue I reported (#937744189590638 - private) was not being able to update the GCM token. The field is readonly, even though the GCM docs explicitly state that the key changes over time. Meaning you have to delete and recreate the Installation - and what happens if you have other objects linked to that installation? Super annoying. Could be easily solved by making that field writable.
I've responded to both your tickets. The deviceType issue seems be resolved now, but please ping me on Twitter at @grantland if the deadlock issue fails to re-open. I just need the SDK version you were using since your thread dump was obfuscated.
WRT the ParseCommandCache links you sent, you're right that there is some trouble using the same lock on a background thread and UI thread. It would possibly cause some UI stuttering, but it wouldn't necessarily cause a deadlock on it's own. There's probably a bit more to it and I'd love to dig deeper and find out why.
For any others reading this - can confirm, deviceToken issue is resolved. It is actually possible to update a pushToken, but you need to have an installationId set (otherwise you'll get an error saying it's not possible).
Posted more info for the ParseCommandCache ANR in the ticket.
It was originally supposed to support 2.3+, but due to timeline constraints I had to release it as 4.0+. I'll be looking into 2.3+ for a future release though!
This game concept was actually one of the games that inspired Kiip. Two of our Co-founders, Amadeus and Courtney, had created it for iOS under the name of Skeemo before Kiip and wanted to reward users who got high scores. We since re-branded it as 7x7 and it became our testing platform for our SDK as well as to showcase our reward system on iOS.
I've been wanting to create 7x7 for Android for a while to be a reliable testing platform for our SDK as well as to showcase our reward system on Android. I finally had some free cycles recently and made it.
If anyone is wondering why it looks completely different than the iOS version, it's because they let me (an Android engineer) do the design all on my own too :P
It was originally supposed to support 2.3+, but due to timeline constraints I had to release it as 4.0+. I'll be looking into 2.3+ for a future release though!
I recall that sub-3.x Androids are about 40% of the market in Google Play, so yeah it's worth doing. (I'm sure there are many more low Androids out there that are simply used as phones and never touch the store)
Game looks great! I'm installing it remotely on my Nexus 7, but from the screenshots I was instantly reminded of Letterpress' visual design.
Wow could you please consider open sourcing it or posting a small tutorial? I'd love to learn how to do something this beautiful without a game engine.
We've actually fixed a few ANR deadlocks in this last release [1], as well as a few others in the releases since 1.8.0 [2].
If you can supply reproduction steps, we'd love to be able to fix this issue as I'm sure you're not the only one experiencing it. In addition, we're more than happy to accept fixes as contributions :D
[1]: https://github.com/ParsePlatform/Parse-SDK-Android/releases/...
[2]: https://parse.com/docs/downloads