After being in an internal Proof of Concept project, one more Android app will soon be seen by the external world. I was learning to work with the ContactsContacts API. This API is a contract between the Contacts provider and applications.
Most of the code related to accessing the API is done as part of a library project called aeappslibrary, the code for which is open source and already available in GitHub. This library can be reused by other projects to work with the API. There have been hours spent on studying the API while developing this library. MessageCounter is an application that already utilizes this library.
It was near the end of 2012 that I started learning about the Android's ContactContract API. In order to learn the various parts of the API, I decided to create an Android App. That turned out to be a simple app called Random Contact. The UI was very basic and not very attractive - the sole reason it has lived its life as an internal app.
The Random Contact application shows you a Contact randomly picked from your contacts list. It will list all the contact numbers and easily allow you to call or text them. Other details that we can get using the API are the times that person has been contacted and the last date of contact. While you may think these features as boring, we think there could be fun uses.
When can you see the app live? Work on version 2, a completely redesigned version, is on steroids for the past few days. As much as the challenges are exciting, I shall provide here, for the first time, an internal road map for any app's development. A Beta release on Google Play is not too distant as of now.
The source code for this app is expected to be released under Apache Licence Version 2.0 on GitHub.
With the supported features as explained earlier, I would appreciate to see some rough drawings on how you expect the UX for the app.
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