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  •   almost 12 years ago

Samsung forcibly uninstalling Master app

I am getting a flood of reports today that people are experiencing the forced uninstall of the Master app.
People with the Gear 2 app are installing the Master app from Google Play.
They are reporting that as soon as they install it, Samsung keeps uninstalling it, over and over again, and then prompting them to install it.
User contacted customer support, got no help. They said it was not on the compatible list, even though the link to the playstore app is clearly indicated in the manifest.

I have contacted Developer Support as well. I expect they will reject the question without a screenshot.

What is Samsung doing? I am very unhappy with them right now. Is there any way to escalate the support request?

Samsung has no right to uninstall apps installed by another app store. End users may not even have a gear device, and they have the right to patronize other stores.

  • 21 comments

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Confirmed that this is the behavior of the latest Gear Manager. It will uninstall a Master app as soon as it is installed.

    Write an app for Samsung and they respond by sabotaging your other apps.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Essentially, it appears the checking "Unknown Sources" in Gear Manager is useless.

    I can't even install my own app unless I downgrade host manager.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Samsung Galaxy Apps support rejected the question. I am trying with the Premium Support Service.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Where you can access Premium Support Service?
    I noticed that after app update, app is dropped from top downloads rank, like it was losing history of downloads and starts from 0...

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    In the upper right corner of developer.samsung.com. But that's after taking some steps to enable it that were sent in an email from support@ssac2014.com.

    I don't know what all happens with the app store. End user sent me a screenshot of his store, and it looked COMPLETELY different from what I see. For instance, he has search and I don't. Not a terribly good search, I assume, since 314 apps came up with an exact title search for my app. I just have the categories and an extremely long list in each. Possibly ordered by downloads ranks, though I am not sure.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Nathan, can you clarify the exact sequence of events that you're seeing? Your OP is entitled "...uninstalling Master app" but the first sentence says "...uninstall of the follower app." Which is it that's being uninstalled, and when?

    It looks to me like BCN is a linked app, with the master distributed only through Google Play and the follower distributed through Gear Apps. Is that right?

    I'm just trying to get a better idea of the problem you're facing, and how widespread it might be. Thanks!

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Editing to correct inconsistent terminology.

    >Which is it that's being uninstalled, and when?
    The master app.

    >and when?
    IMMEDIATELY after install or update. It does not seem to matter if the install comes from Google Play, an APK, or eclipse. Gear Manager will stamp it out right away.

    >It looks to me like BCN is a linked app, with the master distributed only through Google Play and the follower distributed through Gear Apps. Is that right?

    Yes, exactly that.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    It is entirely possible that there is something that is not right in the manifest. If so, it is something that they decided was wrong and decided to agressively enforce.

    But Gear documentation has no examples or information of what should be in the manifest of a Master app, or what should not be there. None. Zero. Zilch. I had to make it up and try it out a few days before the first deadline.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    I've found out more.

    If I comment out the permission com.samsung.wmanager.APP in the Master manifest, Gear Manager does not act in a malicious manner.

    If the ACCESSORY_FRAMEWORK permission is still there, I can still communicate with the

    >

    As I've mentioned, there is nothing documented about whether you should or should not. I had assumed the manifest was correct since it passed certification in July. I had previously posted to forums and got no information.

    Samsung's approach is odd - they don't want to grant some permission (not even sure what) and instead of simply blocking the permission or giving a warning, they decide to just sabotage the end user by erasing an app without the users permission.

    If this workaround works and gets the angry mobs off my back, I will get over it.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    I think you did not understand the way the linked type is supposed to work.

    The linked type is NOT just like the integrated type, without the widget in the assets. You cannot distribute the APK and the widget separately. Although this was working in the previous version of the Gear manager, it is not supposed to work, and this may be the reason behind the change in the latest Gear manager.

    The master app should have nothing in the manifest referring to Samsung accessory SDK. It has to communicate to the follower app through IPC.

    The follower app contains the widget in the assets folder, and is distributed on Samsung Apps. The master app can be distributed on any store.

    To sum up, you need to have two APKs, one APK for the master app, which does not contain any reference to Samsung accessory SDK, and one APK for the follower app, which contains the widget in the assets folder. The two APKs communicate through IPC.

    For more information on implementing IPC on Android, visit: http://developer.android.com/guide/components/aidl.html

    Also read Samsung programming guide, on page 7, you can see a chart that explains how the linked type is supposed to work:
    http://img-developer.samsung.com/contents/cmm/Samsung_Gear_Application_Programming_Guide_1.0.pdf

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    This is exactly the issue I am talking about. You cannot distribute an APK that communicates with a widget that is not in its assets folder.

    So either:
    - You change it to an integrated type, and you include the widget in the assets folder of the APK.
    or:
    - You change it to a linked type. Then you need two APKs, one will be the master, and the other the follower. They communicate through IPC, as I explained before.

    (A standalone widget, by definition, does not communicate with an APK.)

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    This is just what I understood from reading Samsung programming guide, page 7:
    http://img-developer.samsung.com/contents/cmm/Samsung_Gear_Application_Programming_Guide_1.0.pdf

    It seams logical to me, but I may be wrong, you should ask Samsung support team.

    I also read on the updates that you can change the app type, you have to delete and publish it again.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Thank you noureddineam.
    I have indeed read page 7 of the application guide. I did not find the information you stated here.

    >I think you did not understand the way the linked type is supposed to work.
    Perhaps so, but Samsung's lack of documentations is at least somewhat responsible.

    It does not state anywhere that Master and Follower Application should communicate via IPC. The word IPC is not mentioned anywhere in the document, much less a link to the Android documentation.

    Maybe you have done a lot of Samsung programming or a lot of IPC programming, so you instantly saw the double arrow in the diagram to mean IPC. I did not.

    I asked around on the forums, looked for examples, documentation, or anything that would describe the communication between the apps. Nothing.

    Similarly, there is no mention of what should or should not be in the manifest of a Master app. If they had stated "the Master app should have no Samsung Stuff" as you have, that would be something.

    I also asked that question around, and found nothing.

    >You cannot distribute an APK that communicates with a widget that is not in its assets folder

    I have not found this documented anywhere either. In practice, it works. In fact, one widget can talk to multiple apks on different channels.

    In fact, I have seen no examples of the Linked app implementation and Master. All examples are using Integrated.

    So maybe I need to rewrite everything, but I'd rather have some authoritative documentation first. Samsung has already shown their capacity to viciously enforce unwritten rules that they can change later.

    >It seams logical to me, but I may be wrong, you should ask Samsung support team.
    Unless you have a better channel than me, I have zero confidence in getting an answer that way.
    Their response shows no signs they actually read my request.
    Maybe the premium support service will get me a real answer - I'm waiting for that.

  • Manager   •   almost 12 years ago

    Hi Everyone,

    Thank you for your questions. I’m sorry to hear that you’re having trouble! For information on configuring Gear apps with a host-side provider, please refer to page 14 of the Programming Guide (http://img-developer.samsung.com/contents/cmm/Samsung_Gear_Application_Programming_Guide_1.0.pdf).

    The guide states:

    “If you want to make a host‐side provider for a wearable‐side widget, you must provide Android manifest.xml.

    
To register your application with Gear Manager, add "com.samsung.wmanager.APP" to the uses‐permission (highlighted in yellow) element of the host‐side application’s Android manifest file.

    If your application is a Linked (Master‐Follower) application, add the master app information using metadata tags (highlighted in green) to the AndroidManifest.xml. Gear Manager uses this information to notify users if the master application is absent or is later uninstalled from the Host.”

    If you have further questions about development, please feel free to post them on the Samsung Developers Forum: http://developer.samsung.com/forum/en

    Best,
    Serena

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Thank you, Serena.

    I have done all of those things.

    I still have remaining questions about the things which the docs do not state.
    And why Gear Manager is behaving maliciously.

    I'm hoping the developer forums or support can answer those eventually.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    got the same issue. Do you have final solution for this?

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    for me too, but does it pass the certification?

    @update:
    it seems that you need to have wgt in asset folder as sb said previously. com.samsung.wmanager.APP shoul remain as stated in Programming Guide

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    I got this with integrated app, so submitting to Samsung Galaxy Apps...

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Really? They are sabotaging their own apps too?

    Sorry, no word on what the official fix is, or what the official problem was/is.

    Doesn't look like word is forthcoming, either. Galaxy Apps support, as always, closed the ticket with an excuse that indicated they did not read it. Premium support has said nothing.

    Customers permanently lost personal data. If that workaround hadn't worked, I could have 50,000 *paid* customers losing data within a short time. And Samsung, apparently, doesn't care.

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    @kurak Looks like an app-specific problem to me. My integrated app works fine when I deploy it to the phone and the watch. No forcing unintalling anything. I'm on the latest Gear manager (the one with the orange background).

  •   •   almost 12 years ago

    Yes, well it certainly is an app-specific problem if it doesn't happen for every single app.

    We would just like to know what, specifically, is different about the specific apps that have been targeted for deletion by the latest Gear Manager.

    What is the rule they are trying to enforce, and why are they enforcing it in such a savage manner?

    Only thing noted by members of this thread, by experimentation and not the slightest smidgen of advice from Samsung, is that the permission "com.samsung.wmanager.APP" causes an app to be targetted.

    It should be noted that:
    com.samsung.wmanager.APP is specified as a permission you should add to an integrated app in the Hello Accessory example document.
    There is not mention about whether it should be included in a Master app as part of a linked app scheme because there is no example of a linked application that Samsung has published.

    So apps are being punished severely for a manifest entry that Samsung told them to use. There may be more to it than that, but the silence from Samsung is deafening.

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