Pleco takes one minute to load

[alfredm]

On my Samsung Mega 6.3. It was running fine until I ran out of space for apps (the Mega 6.3 has only 8GB) and I started deleting some apps and moving others to the SD card. I believe I didn't touch Pleco (version 3.2.12).

Then I tried uninstalling Pleco completely and reinstalling it, but it didn't help. When I start Pleco there is first a grey screen which after about 10-15 seconds turns black, then after one minute Pleco is finally available. How to solve the problem?

 

[mikelove]

Does the problem go away if you put your phone into Airplane Mode?

 

[alfredm]

Yes. But I can't keep the phone all the time in airplane mode. What else can I do?

 

[mikelove]

Try installing the latest beta version from this post - it has a fix (or at least an attempt at one).

 

[alfredm]

I tried version 3.2.13 and it doesn't solve the problem. Is there anything else I can do?

I'm wondering what is causing the issue, because until I performed the memory saving steps Pleco was working nicely. Now it looks as if Pleco was trying to connect to the Internet, for some reason fails and only starts after a timeout.

By the way I'm in China right now. In China when you try to access a web page which uses Google APIs you have to wait a long time because the Google APIs (for instance Google Maps) are blocked. Such webpages only load after a while (I guess after the timeout). Pleco is now behaving the same way.

 

[mikelove]

Another thought, then - are you using a version downloaded from Google Play? If so, back up all of your data, delete that version and download one from our website instead - the problem might relate to our app trying to connect to Google Play's in-app purchase server. You could also try downloading a version from Amazon AppStore.

 

[alfredm]

Well, I uninstalled completely (at least I think so) Pleco and then reinstalled it from your website because here in China I have no access to Google Play. But now it indeed looks as if Pleco was trying to connect to the Google Play store at every start.

 

[mikelove]

Got it, thanks - have to see if we can keep the Play version from misbehaving, then, must be doing something in a foreground thread that it should only be doing in a background one.

 

[alfredm]

I might add that I'm using the paid for version of Pleco. Perhaps Pleco is trying to access Google Play to see which features are activated?

 

[mikelove]

@alfredm - possibly, yes. The connection to Google's servers is all handled by their library - for our purposes it's kind of a 'black box' - so we need to find a way to get that to behave better, or perhaps disable it entirely if you're on a Chinese IP address.