So I'm thinking this may be impossible. But on each phone platform there is a convention to send an SMS link, that when clicked, will launch an application on the device and do something based on the parameters sent in the link.
Ex:
iPhone: Launch an app from a link in an SMS
Android: Launch Android app from within SMS/MMS message?
However is there anyway to do this that is effectively cross platform? For example I have an android phone with my app, and I send an invitation to a friend that has the same app but the iphone version (perhaps I don't know he has an iphone I just have a phone number). Is there a way to send a sms link that figures out it's being opened on an iphone, and sends the link to open the iphone version of the app? Perhaps there is a way to embed very simple logic into a hyperlink that changes based on what device it is? Is there any way to pull off something like this?
I realize I could send multiple links and have the user click the one that is appropriate, but that seems a little sloppy (especially as more platforms become available, it will be cumbersome to cram all the links into 1 SMS message for every device).
This is a difficult situation with no easy answer unfortunately.
Option A) You send a link that points to your server. This link identifies the device based on user agent and then forwards them to the proper sms: link for each platform.
Option B) If you know what type of device you are sending the link to beforehand, then you can determine the proper link on the server side before it is sent.
Related
I need to be able to control Android phone through my webapp. I need to know which permissions do I need to take from user from his/her google account. For example I need another user to be able to send an address to this user and this should open his Google Map with that address shown. Or send a message and it should be somehow opened on the user's phone. Is this all possible? If yes, then how. If no, what can be the closest we can achieve?
If your are creating an Android application that can be installed on users phone than as far as I know this is quite possible...
All you need to do is to use push notifications server like firebase to send the data from your webapp to an application on users phone. Then according to the request received the application has to determine which intent/Broadcast to send.
I have a mobile application in iOS and Android formats. I run a server containing a database of user telephone numbers, for the purposes of sending an SMS message via Twilio. However, I don't know what operating system each number is associated with. The app does not make HTTP contact with the server.
I want to send a link to each of my users by SMS, which will redirect to the appropriate app store depending on their operating system. Facebook does this - does anyone know how they do it? Do they detect the operating system via the phone number?
Basically, once user click on that link it should automatically redirects to appropriate app store.
Ah. You have users DB represented by the phone number only, right? So you don't actually know which smartphone user has Android or iOS. In this case you should use a special universal url (sent in SMS, most probably shortened) linked to a special webpage on your server with special js (JavaScript, web devs should help on this) intergated. This script should detect which type of device user is using while viewing a webpage and simply redirect to the corresponding market. Also you could provide just both app market links on your page so it will be up to user to choose - in this case no js needed, it could be a very simple html page.
We are creating a landing page of sorts for our iPhone/Android app and on this page there will be a link to each of the respective app stores. However, when the user is on a computer, it's a bit cumbersome to access the app stores (particularly Apple's app store). So we would like to add a "send text message to phone" feature like Groupon does on http://www.groupon.com/mobile.
Now, my questions with this are as follows:
A) What sort of code do I need to put in to make this feature work? Is this super intensive or are there free or cheap options available out there to do this for me?
B) How does the code know whether it is an iPhone or Android that it's texting? Groupon took me immediately to the Apple store on it's link. Tried going through the source code on Groupon but it was a bit beyond my grasp.
Thanks for any help!
A few different things are needed to get this up and running:
You should use something like Twilio to programmatically send text messages
You need a page on your server (say http://mydomain.com/app_redirect) that sniffs user agents and then redirects the user to either the iOS AppStore or Android store respectively
Once you have those pieces it's fairly simple
Create landing page like groupons
When the user posts their cell phone to your server call Twilio to send out a text message containing the link http://mydomain.com/app_redirect
When user taps the link it will open a webview, which will then redirect to the correct appstore url depending on the device
I'm looking at building functionality similar to Amazon's Appstore installation flow (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000626391&ref=mas_gs) to get a user to install an apk without going through Google's App Market.
Basically, I would like to provide a web page form that accepts an email or phone number. In Amazon's case, when the user enters a phone number, it sends a notification to the phone with an actionable link that can be used to finally install an apk.
To build something similar, what is the best way to actually implement this so that the user receives an Android notification that is non-intrusive, but noticeable enough that they can expand it to complete the install process?
Note that at this point, the user does not yet have any version of the target app installed yet, so it's solely reliant on the user providing a phone number to reach them.
First Option:
You would need some kind of integration on your web site to be able to send sms.
A quick google search returned a site with a list of some possible services that can let you do that: http://mashable.com/2008/04/19/send-text-messages/
And you would sms a direct download link to the application wherever it's stored on your server.
Then they would download and install it.
Second Option:
Say screw the phone number business, and just have them click a download link on the website.
Third option:
Use email.
This link, another one I grabbed from google, might help with that: How do I send email from my website?
I don't really think there's any other way to do it, but I have never done web programming (other than simple html), so I don't really know that much on this topic.
Many mobile operating systems (such as Android and iOS) automatically hyperlink URLs and Phone Numbers included in an SMS. Is this behavior managed by the mobile carrier, the OS, or the Device?
I'm designing an application that requires users be able to access a WAP site via a hyperlink in an SMS. Unfortunately, this site has to be accessible to both smartphones and feature phones.
Any information on general standards or in-market statistics would be great!
Is this behavior managed by the mobile carrier, the OS, or the Device?
On Android, it is "managed" by whoever wrote the SMS client app. That could be anyone. Any SMS client worth its salt should be making URLs clickable, but there is no guarantee.
Maybe you want to check WAP PUSH, which make URL clickable in all phones (expect the Iphone O think). Check this guide on how to format a WAP PUSH http://nexmo.com/documentation/how-to/send-a-wap-push-message/
It's entirely dictated by the application. In fact other applications such as the browser, etc perform the same operation on telephone numbers, addresses, etc. Just make sure you format your text in a manner that looks like a link or whatever it is. For example
Phone number: (xxx) xxx-xxx or xxxxxxxxx or xxx-xxx-xxxx, etc.
Hyperlink: http://xxxxxx.xxx
(BTW SO does it as well...I never inserted the link ;-) )
etc.