Castro Progress Report: July 2019

Friday, Jul 5, 2019 · 4 min read · 741 words

After a short break, the next update for Castro is released, which brings full support for Android Q, new features for all users, Dark Theme for everyone and many fixes and design improvements, so let’s begin.

Castro | Castro Premium

Detailed changelog

Information

Android Q

For Android Q users, a large amount of information has been added, all less significant information will be displayed in the list below, but the main updates are 5G support, support for XDR10 + and a check for the SIM card type (namely, local or electronic).

Also, users of Android Q will have opportunity to enable Wi-Fi in its category using “System Panel”, new API from Google.

Quite an important note, for all users of the Q information about the Identifiers will not be available, because Google has changed the use of internal APIs and closed access to them.

Other changes

Added [Wi-Fi]: Support for OWE.
Added [Wi-Fi]: Support for WPA3 Personal SAE.
Added [Wi-Fi]: Support for WPA3 Enterprise Suite-B-192.
Added [Codecs]: New data - Hardware acceleration and check for only software codecs.
Updated [Wi-Fi]: Support for Device-To-App RTT.
Updated [SIM]: Support for MCC and MNC.

General

Although almost all new information is available only to Android Q users, for all other users small updates were made for some information fields, namely:

System: Formatting of Security Patch field.
Device: Building of supported HDR types.

Features

One of the biggest and most important changes for Android Q, which had to be made is the work with the device data storage. The first change is pleasant, the application no longer requires permission to read and write to the external storage. The second change is the removed ability to save the state of the sensor’s graph in the memory device, but I think it will not be a problem, because few people used the function. And the last change associated with memory is the choice of location to save information reports. Now you will select the folder for saving your report yourself with the help of the “Storage Access Framework” built into each device.

Another small change is the automatic shutdown of all energy saving features when the network speed notification is turned off.

And the last important change is the function called “Premium Condition”. If you are using Premium version of the application, then now in all screens, where the name of application is displayed, the premium version will be displayed instead of the normal version. Also in the launcher will be displayed premium icon, rather than the usual, which will allow you to easily determine the version of the application.

Design

One of the most important design updates is the availability of the basic dark theme for users of the basic version. In a future update, I plan to add support for the two dark theme inclusion modes: “Follow the system” and “Follow the power saving mode”.

Almost all dialog boxes received the “Close” or “Cancel” buttons, which allows you to close these windows without any difficulties. In general, this update has done a lot to improve UX of application.

Among the less significant changes, I can note the updated “Create” buttons in the “Export Information” and “Create Widget” windows, a full update of the “About Castro” screen design and an update to the Premium’s icon design.

Fixes

Much work has been done on fixing bugs, so this update should bring long-awaited stability to the work.

All fixes

Fixed: Hiding of unavailable information categories.
Fixed: Wi-Fi category badly initialized.
Fixed: Navigation bar not tinted in “Screen tester” window.
Fixed: Not tinted navigation bar in bottom dialog in “Export” window.
Fixed: Edges of colors were cut in “Color Picker” dialog.
Fixed: Blank icon in Widget’s updating notification.
Fixed: Missing title and text in Widget’s updating notification.
Fixed: Missing information fields should not shift widget’s layouts.
Fixed: Default categories should be displayed in widget’s preview in Configure screen.
Fixed: Blinking parts of UI in startup screen.
Fixed: Technical process of Qualcomm MSM8953 processor.

What’s next?

The next application that receives the update is Skit, so in the near future Castro will only receive updates to fix bugs or add localizations. Also very soon Castro Premium will receive a 50 percent discount, so wait for it!

If you have any ideas or suggestions for improving my applications, then I am always ready to listen to you on pavlo.rekun.development@gmail.com.