Introducing Bitcoin for Android

[Nescio]

Does the app allow you to select transaction fee? And what about wallet encryption?

[vectorvictor]

Put a USD/BTC calculator on there so I can calculate how much I owe my friends for dinner and I'll pay them in bitcoin.

Already requested by someone else: See https://github.com/barmstrong/bitcoin-android/issues/5.

This is already implemented by Bitcoin Wallet for Android. (see signature for Market page)

Is there a somewhat standardized USD/BTC exchange rate, that is indexed over *all* of the exchange sites rather than just Mt.Gox?

As more merchants adopt bitcoin payments, it will be helpful to have a single reliable exchange rate that can be grabbed from a known location.

The 1-day weighted average for Mt.Gox is available from the Trade History tab at bitcoincharts:
 http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_trades.html

That is a decent estimate, but we really need a weighted average over most or all exchanges (we need to decentralize this critical function).  The smaller volume sites won't have much impact on the weighted average right now, but implementing this now will allow a smooth transition as sites like TradeHill and Camp BX gain market share.

Wait, is the value reported on the front page of bitcoincharts.com and in
 http://bitcoincharts.com/t/weighted_prices.json
the indexed rate over all exchanges?  If so, that guy is totally awesome, and i'm totally hitting him with a big tip.

[Rassah]

I can confirm that reinstalling the app WILL erase your own wallet, and WILL overwrite whatever backup you may have in the cloud, so unless Google has an older backup of the wallet file and can give me access to it, these 2 coins are gone for ever as well
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1DWwhv9Kg3SE9GBX7Kk9A11nw3B3MUBe2t

Not TOO upset, since these were mined and I have plenty more, but, still, it's money lost
So, PLEASE make the ability to back up a wallet to the SD card or computer a HIGH priority!

(p.s. reason I had 2 on there is because I was hoping to go shopping in NY for some food)

[error]

Actually, it seems that UNinstalling the app erases the wallet. Android by default removes all of an app's saved preferences from the internal phone memory when the app is uninstalled.

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

This is a great development. But they should consider making it a light-weight client as soon as possible.

15MB is already ultra lightweight for a bitcoin client. If you want to have a real thin client use something like an instawallet client or a bitcoind remote control. both exists on android already.

15MB today, but if it intends to store the entire blockchain, as well as receive and propagate every transaction, how much resources will it be consuming in the near future? Bitcoin is growing exponentially.

[Ben Walsh (beamer)]

My experience. HTC Magic ...

App downloads and installs as quickly as most other apps.

However, seems to take some time to download the compressed blockchain and needs to be left as the running app to do so.

Checking through GitHub project I see these are all raised bar the download rate, which I guess is a result of every man and his dog currently trying to ;O)

Will update once I've managed to receive and send - going to wait the the blockchain download to complete first.

[luv2drnkbr]

Ok so I was messing around with this app and Bitcoin wallet, and trying to send coins back and forth just to test it.  For the most part things worked well, except when I was a bit of an impatient dufus, and sent some btc back and forth within a block or two.  The Bitcoin 1.0 app didn't see the transaction, even after a few blocks (and block explorer confirmed that it was put into an earlier block), so I sent the remaining BTC to my Instawallet, quit the app and used Titanium backup to restore the data to a previous time.  I then opened it and tried to re-download the chain, but it's not showing the transaction (or the money sent out to Instawallet).  So now it thinks it has more BTC than the address actually has.  And I can't send out the amount I know it has because the transaction is invalid (since it tries to send too much back to itself).

So is there a way to have it re-scan the block chain?  Or can I somehow get my private key for that address?  Basically, is there any way to recover the btc for that address?  I feel like there should be since the program obviously has to have the private key, but I'm not at ALL tech-savvy enough to know what to look for or how to go about the recovery...

[1.21gigawatts]

I just downloaded and installed this.  Unlike the bitcoin desktop client, how do I know how much of the block chain it's already downloaded?

[Ben Walsh (beamer)]

You don't. Bug / design request has already been raised on the GitHub page for the project.

I just downloaded and installed this.  Unlike the bitcoin desktop client, how do I know how much of the block chain it's already downloaded?

[Distribution]

I can confirm that reinstalling the app WILL erase your own wallet, and WILL overwrite whatever backup you may have in the cloud, so unless Google has an older backup of the wallet file and can give me access to it, these 2 coins are gone for ever as well
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1DWwhv9Kg3SE9GBX7Kk9A11nw3B3MUBe2t

Not TOO upset, since these were mined and I have plenty more, but, still, it's money lost
So, PLEASE make the ability to back up a wallet to the SD card or computer a HIGH priority!

(p.s. reason I had 2 on there is because I was hoping to go shopping in NY for some food)

I had sent .01, another .01, and when these worked another .98 (a week ago today). The .98 never showed up so I tried sending the two small transactions out, but this didn't work either. I tried letting the app sit open without sleep mode over night to update, but it never worked. I backed up Bitcoin with Titanium Backup. I then uninstalled Bitcoin and THOUGHT I was clicking to open Titanium only to realize I clicked on it to uninstall it and I too have now lost my Bitcoin. I'm going through the whole process of downloading the blockchain again and hoping it works this time.

[Clavulanic]

So the wallet data is stored in the cloud? So if I uninstall it that's all gone.
I guess if you got a new phone or reset your phone, as long as you log in with your google account you should be able to retrieve said wallet?

[bitbot]

but will this generate bitcoins faster than my 2007 laptop?

[Distribution]

but will this generate bitcoins faster than my 2007 laptop?

Possibly. Unless you meant 2,007 laptops. In that case, you're probably Best Buy and should start accepting Bitcoins.

[Rassah]

So the wallet data is stored in the cloud? So if I uninstall it that's all gone.
I guess if you got a new phone or reset your phone, as long as you log in with your google account you should be able to retrieve said wallet?

I would not trust it. My copy created a new wallet and overwrote the one in the cloud.

Use Titanium Backup, and copy the backup file from the SD card to your computer. That may require a rooted phone though.

[Clavulanic]

So the wallet data is stored in the cloud? So if I uninstall it that's all gone.
I guess if you got a new phone or reset your phone, as long as you log in with your google account you should be able to retrieve said wallet?

I would not trust it. My copy created a new wallet and overwrote the one in the cloud.

Use Titanium Backup, and copy the backup file from the SD card to your computer. That may require a rooted phone though.

Yeah, I'm not going to keep anything more than maybe $30 in BTC on it for sure.

Seems others are having issues downloading the blockchain too. Mine just seems to be downloading really slow and stopping/starting randomly. Currently at 14.619mb and slowly going up.

[Mike Hearn]

Hi there,

I'm the creator of BitCoinJ which this app is based on.

It's really early days for these mobile apps yet. Expect slowness, instability, bugs and losing of coins. All the issues reported in this thread are known and we'll implement solutions eventually. Until then accept that you're on the bleeding edge and from time to time, that means you'll bleed.

[Dusty]

[Awesome -- registering to this thread for updates]

[Distribution]

I updated today and am getting status bars. Is this new? Or did I just not update my last install?

[Sultan]

So where is the wallet on the phone? I want to be able to back up my wallet myself.

[BitPay Business Solutions]

So where is the wallet on the phone? I want to be able to back up my wallet myself.

I have the same question.  I have some coins in the wallet, and now the app keeps closing itself without letting me in.  I'd like to move the coins to another android device, but where is the file?