google play - My app does not appear in the android market of my Samsung Galaxy S phone

Question

It seems that I have a very similar problem to this one, but the solution described there didn't help me.

I have developed the application named PYahtzee Free and PYahtzee. The first one is for free, the second one is the paid version.

The problem is that on my phone's (Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000) market when I search for my apps they are somehow filtered out and cannot be found. I enabled everything on my phone, but without success.

I tried to amend the manifest file too. For example in this last version I deleted the "supports-screens" tag from the manifest file. But the app is still missing and I cannot download it. I tried out also with and without "uses-permission" tags and there are no "uses-feature" tags either.

I think the problem is, that when I first uploaded the application, there were some restrictions in the manifest file. Despite the fact that in the last versions I amended the manifest file, this was not reflected in the search engine. So even if there is no such a tag in the manifest file, the original (first) values are still kept somewhere for the market's search engine (and not updated at upload).

This was in the first version of the manifest file (but in the previous version there was no such a tag):

<supports-screens
        android:smallScreens="false"
        android:normalScreens="true"
        android:largeScreens="true"
        android:anyDensity="false"
        android:resizeable="false"/>

I wrote an email to the android's market support team too, but no answer.

Could you please help to find an answer, since I have not found any hint on the forum or internet.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      package="com.pyahtzeefree"
      android:versionCode="6"
      android:versionName="6">
<uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="5"/>
<supports-screens android:resizeable="true"
                  android:anyDensity="false"
                  android:smallScreens="true"
                  android:normalScreens="true"
                  android:largeScreens="true"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"></uses-permission>
<application android:label="PYahtzeeFree" android:icon="@drawable/icon">
    <activity android:name="com.pyahtzeefree.IntroScreen"
              android:label="@string/app_name"
              android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER"/>
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>
    <activity android:name="com.pyahtzeefree.PYahtzeeFreeActivity"
              android:label="@string/app_name"
              android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar"
              android:screenOrientation="portrait"
            >
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.EMBED"/>
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>
    <activity android:name="com.pyahtzeefree.StatisticsView"
              android:label="@string/app_name"
              android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.EMBED"/>
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>
    <activity android:name="com.pyahtzeefree.HelpAbout"/>
</application>
</manifest> 

Answer 1

After many trials I have managed to figure out what was the problem: I had a raw directory among resources. This contains - among others - three files like "bestfixarray_compressedbin.jet". If these files are small in size (a few kB) the application is shown as "compatible" with my device on the market (both when browsed with the PC on the web and on the phone's app). In the reality these files are in total 31MB. When I include these files into the package and upload the app to the market, at the end the market filters the app out. Please note that when I check the "Supported Device" on the "Product details" tab, my phone is still shown as "compatible" :)

So:

Don't put too big files into the res/raw directory! As a result the market will not show your app to many devices.