I have an application on the Android Play Store. I also have a Windows based application (service). My users install the service on their PCs, and they install the Android application on their mobile devices. These send data back and forth.
I have an update for both applications. If I update JUST ONE, it will not work.
My preferred method – is this possible?:
– Upload a new APK to the marketplace
– Somehow flag it so that auto update is OFF
– When users click to install, I’d like a massive warning “Requires XXXXXXX” telling them to update their Windows Service as well.
Has anyone else ran into this? Did you do it like I’m looking to do? If not, how did you go about it?
I suppose I could rename the mobile application and tell users to install it during the install of the newer Windows service. But that would leave the old application out there as well, and I like the idea of updating it; not having two installed.
So the question is – Is that possible or not, and if not, what’s a better route to go?
I don’t think it is possible to prevent the update notifications.
One option you have though is to have the PC side communicate its version to the Android side and inside your Android app build it to be backwards compatible so that if the updated app see’s that the PC client is old it will continue to use the old methods for interacting with the PC.
And only if it sees that the PC client has also been updated will it start to use the new interactions.
This would also allow you to inform the user that their version of the PC app is out of date and that the should update it to get the most out of the Android app.