App World 1.1 mangles Pandora & Slacker
After finally, reluctantly, giving up on OS 5.0.0.130, I rolled back to 4.6.1.250. Unfortunately, the install process choked just prior to restoring my themes and apps, so I was left with the bare OS, and the need to download and reinstall all my apps and themes.
I started by installing the new App World, and then pulling down Pandora, Slacker and a few other items. All seemed to go well -- no error messages.
A bit later, I tried to fire up Slacker. As expected, I had to enter my existing account info -- but I got all sorts of weird errors each time I tried this. It would sit for a while attempting to log me in (although caption read "creating account - this may take a few minutes"). After about 2 or 3 minutes, I would see a network error message, and Slacker would freeze. I tried this while connected via UMA, GPRS, EDGE -- no difference. I re-registered the 8900, re-sent service books, rebooted the device -- no joy.
I set Slacker aside for a bit and tried out Pandora. It too had network issues, and erred out trying to download my station list.
Weird -- so I did a bit of googling, and found that this is a known issue -- at least to the Pandora folks. It seems that installing via App World can create some kind of messed up configuration that simply doesn't work. Their recommendation is to delete the app, then use the BB browser to surf to their website and install that way. I tried this, and it did, indeed, work this time. So -- something in the way that App World installs Pandora can create fatal issues for the app.
On a hunch (didn't take a lot of deep thought here!), I deleted Slacker, and tried installing it via the MobiHand app store. This worked just fine -- and Slacker now works properly as well.
Only artifact left from this fiasco is this:
I had tried to use App World to archive a few apps to my microSDHC card. I found it a bit cumbersome, and didn't realize that in the process is would actually remove them from the phone. My bad for not reading up on this in detail first. So I restored the apps and thought I was done with this. Now -- as you read above, I deleted Slacker and Pandora from my 8900 and then reinstalled without using App World. However -- when I go back into App World now, it shows both Slacker and Pandora archived! I tried the option within App World to delete the archived apps -- and it says that it deleted them. however there are now two persistent entries in "my world" section of app world showing Pandora - uninstalled and Slacker - uninstalled. It now offers the option to reinstall the apps -- and there appears to be no way to remove them from App World's list. Nice idea -- but they should allow me more control over my own app list!
Anyway -- point of the post is to let people know that if they're having trouble with Pandora or Slacker after an App World install, there's an explanation and a fix.