MoMo / 陌陌 Android app won't launch
asked 2014-09-25 16:05:48 +0200
I tried to install the Android app Momo: http://www.immomo.com/?v=zh#mm_downloads It's very popular in China with millions of users.
It seems to install ok, but when I launch it, the screen just goes black for a long time and eventually it fails with the error in attached screenshot. Rebooted, re-installed, even factory-reset device and tried again - no luck. Any ideas?
From what I found on the web, MoMo is a location based service.
Could it be that the Android version depends on Google Maps? If so it could be one of the applications that need Google Play API, a proprietary layer on top of Android that Jolla cannot distribute for legal reasons. There are ways around that as far as I know, I haven't tried that though as I want to stay away from Google services.
ossi1967 ( 2014-09-25 17:10:56 +0200 )editNo, that's not it. Google, and not just the search engine, but all of it - maps, calendar, docs, GMail, analytics, hosted scripts and fonts for web devs, captcha service, AdSense / AdWords control panel, the Play store - everything is blocked. You have no idea how many websites break here because they use some kind of Google service under the hood.
You want to stay away from Google services? Me too. But I'm experiencing live what that means. Like you go to a travel website and the date picker doesn't work because it uses a G-hosted jquery script. It's awful.
But that also means no Chinese developer will rely on any Google service. In fact, if you follow the download link in my question, you'll see they straight-up offer the .apk file from their own website instead of linking to the Google Play store like almost every Western Android developer does. So, that's a dead end.
Olle Jolle ( 2014-09-25 18:20:38 +0200 )editSo that wasn't it. Thank you for your information though. I never thought of such consequences.
ossi1967 ( 2014-09-25 19:26:12 +0200 )edit