Bitcoin Forum

Is there anything that prevents someone from a regularly updated blockchain snapshot download via Android Market, so that new users (or users that haven't permitted their Bitcoin Android client to update recently) can slurp down a recent snapshot, verify it, and then bootstrap from there?

Their sheer size? That's the first thing that comes to mind.

First thanks, I think this client is a big step in the right direction, but it seems it still has some flaws:

I send me a money request by mail and send sent 0.01BTC to the android client in order to try it. I did this 8 hours ago, the transaction has 76 confirmations but it still has not appeared in the android client. I have tried to turn off WLAN and only use 3G in order to make sure it is not a firewall problem, but nothing so far.

What can I do? Is there any way to get hold of the wallet of this thing? Or make it somehow rescan the blockchain?

I'm having the same problem, and am starting to suspect that we've been tricked into sending small change to an address not under our own control.  I can't find evidence on my own phone that it's actually downloading the blockchain (headers or full).  There is no block count, only a spinning icon; so there is no way to judge it's progress.  The only option in the settings section is 'refresh'.  What is it refreshing?  I can't examine the code, so until I see evidence otherwise, or someone on this forum that I trust will inform me otherwise, I will consider this a rather ingenious method of 'phishing' fraud.

Is this with "Android Bitcoin" or "Bitcoin Wallet"?

For Bitcoin Android and any other future client that uses the headers-only blockchain.

I don't think the headers-only blockchain is the root of your problem. Can you try "Bitcoin Wallet"? (see link in my sig)

Force closes.  Sometimes lockng up the phone, requiring me to pull the battery and reboot.  I have a Samsung Intercept

Can you send me a crash report? Did you already clear your apps data after upgrading from an earlier release?

Nope, I wiped it out.  Sorry.

The apps aren't fraudulent but:

1) They have names that are far too similar to each other. I've already asked Andreas and Brian to sort that out.

2) They come with health warnings for a reason. They are VERY NEW and you do run the risk of losing coins put into them.

I'm reserving judgment.

I am here to say, with certainty, that this is not a fraud.  I got mine to work, and now I think I know what has been going wrong.  The download is getting interupted without any kind of error or even a force close.  To get it done, you need to plug your phone into the charger, turn on the app, select 'refresh' from the settings menu, and just set it down near your wifi router and go to bed.  DO NOT hit the button to make the screen sleep.  The app will keep the screen on, which is why you need it plugged in, and will take many hours to march through the blockchain.  But by morning, the spinning icon should be gone and any coins that you sent to it should be visable.  You can safely stop the app, and the next time you start the app, it will take only a short while to catch up.

Obviously we're talking about different apps here. Make sure you've got the app from my sig installed.

Rename your apps to be clearly different and this type of confusion will go away.

But like I said, if you can't get the block chain the problem is not enough users have upgraded to 0.3.24 yet. Right now the whole network is suffering because nodes older than 0.3.24 cannot send the chain to new users. It's impossible to overstate how critical this is. If you haven't upgraded to 0.3.24, do so as soon as possible.

I'm talking about the recently released 'Bitcoin Android' client that keeps a local copy of the blockchain on the SD card.  Not your 'Bitcoin Wallet' app.  Since I'm the one who started this thread, I'd say that I don't have to make sure of anything with regards to what is in your sig.