Hi, I would like to voice concerns from a developer perspective on the Glyph Developer Kit that I’ll just call SDK from now on and in combination with that, my support team experience:
I feel like that the recent support for this novel idea has died down. The state of the GitHub page was left to rot, the new Phone (2a) Plus did NOT have any support even if the README said so and after contacting the Nothing Support via the Settings > System > Feedback option (support id: 746325, 21st of October 2024) I was asked to provide all kinds of information (Phone system version, demo video, full phone logs encrypted with an unknown password?!?) that did not change a thing about fixing the problem.
The problem was really easy to fix in my opinion: Uploading the new SDK and updating the README.
And yea it should be that easy because I found a workaround that just worked by pretending that the 2a Plus is a 2a.
After trying to explain to the support team that nothing of that is needed to fix the issue and sending them a demo application and video that clearly demonstrates the issue at hand, I was ensured that they have forwarded this to the relevant team and that they will keep me updated.
After not hearing from them for a week I decided to check in and was assured that the team is working on it.
Then a month passed since first contact and I reached out again and it seemed like my original ticket was just closed - either by an automatic system or deliberately - since my mail was marked as a follow up inquiry.
What I learned later is that there was a silent update to the SDK GitHub repository (13th of November 2024) that actually added the new updated java file with compatibility for the 2a Plus. The support team also told me that the team has updated the SDK and the README on the 16th of December (more than a month since the actual SDK update) and wanted to closed the follow up support ticket (id: 805719).
After waiting for 57 days for this confirmation it turned out that the README was not updated and did not match with the actual logic of the SDK. I went ahead and submitted a pull request to fix the broken README and wrote that to the support team.
This fix of mine was promptly merged on the 18th of December (58 days in total).
I also want to raise the issue of the current state of the GitHub repository of the SDK:
This repo does not seem maintained except for the occasional update of the README and SDK itself. Many people have raised issues that are still open and not addressed. Why suggest that this SDK is open and made for collaboration by hosting it on GitHub and then not using the features and feedback provided over GitHub? Why not use the community to contribute to the SDK and make it open source? Let the community add convenience functions and help find bugs. Most of the actual led logic is hidden behind a service on the phone anyways so there is not that much that can go wrong.
Another thing that bummed me is that the usage of the SDK in the background is officially not possible. This may have stopped many developers in their tracks to utilize the SDK to its full potential. It is still possible though with some clever background code.
So just to summarize:
- The support team seems to not have enough time/resources to fully read the replies and just seems to follow a list with things they should do without actually looking at the problem at hand.
- The communication between the teams and the support team seems non optimal.
- The SDK should be open source and actively maintained to at least update it when a new phone releases.
- Consider adding proper background usage support for the SDK.
Thank you for your time 🙂
