About a year ago, my Android excursions culminated in me programming my first Android app, which even did something useful for my research on top, a cell logger app that saves cell and location area IDs the app encounters to a text file. Since then I've offered it on the blog for download as an APK file for direct installation and the source code on top for those who want to have a look or play with it themselves. Also, I published it on the Android market (now Google Play) to get a feeling for how complicated it is to publish something there and to see if it would be picked up over time.
And indeed it did. While I don't have any statistics on how often it was downloaded from my blog, Google's market statistics are quite insightful. In one year the app was downloaded to 1357 devices and 300 installs are still active (which doesn't necessarily mean it is used all the time). The numbers might seem quite small, but it's an experimental app so it's probably only useful to few people. So I'm delighted and happy that the app was useful to others as well. Actually to more than I expected. There's still a lot of potential for the app such as adding GPS tracking and maps overlay, etc. Perhaps that's something for after this summer once a current project that consumes my spare time is finished.