Android application should expire after 1 month of its release [duplicate]

This question already has answers here: Creating an Android trial application that expires after a fixed time period 开发者_JS百科 (13 answers) Closed 9 years ago.

My android application should work only for 1 month after its release. What to do for that?

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Please see this question, it has a good answer.

I will give you my experience with trials. At first I tried just using the date on the phone, but then realized if they uninstall and re-install this can be bypassed. This could be fixed by storing the install date somewhere on the file system (hidden), but what happens if the user wipes data or finds the file?

I also tried to just check the date/time at a server anywhere (maybe your www site?), but this imposes restrictions on your application because they must have internet. Soon I realized the need for better license management, so the last solution was used.

The last solution would be to setup a server. You can use the device's unique ID (whichever you choose - I went with the Bluetooth MAC ID because my application requires bluetooth as well), post to a server to check if the user has a trial, if they don't I issue them one, if they do I check the expiration. Now I have complete control over when trials expire. Since my application is a business app that is used in the field, this is very handy if a potential buyer needs another week.

The only issue with the last solution is that if you plan on publishing to Market, you must use their payment system.

Good luck!

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Just to add a bit more code-related as well:

• Use SharedPreferences to store the date on first-start up
• Get the date at every start up - you can use for exampe Date.currentTimeMillis() - and calculate if 1 month has passed

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Check current date and calculate expiration date.

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That should be pretty easy, just read the date on the first start-up and store it, then compare the date for every subsequent start-up with the stored date, if its greater that x days, pop-up a message box saying the app has expired.

Or am I missing something ?

/Tony

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Use alarm Reciever instead, and broadcast when it gets expired. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlarmManager.html,

here is a tutorial TOO.. http://moazzam-khan.com/blog/?p=157

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if you are worried about the data on the device(and you should! unless you encrypt it) you can save the data on a server and retrieve it on each start up.

On the other hand if application crackers worries you, dalvik byte code today is easily reversed using dedexter or smali and with apktools and jarsigner you can actually find the place where the protection is change some jumps, fill the rest of the code with nops to keep it aligned and resign it uploading it to some crackers market where they share it. So it wont help you too much. You can make life hard for them if you obfuscate your code with proguard, but it will slow them down,wont stop them.

If your app is web based, meaning the user will need to obtain server data from you, create a key for the registered users that will be received from the server (you can base it on their private details + IMEI) and verify your requests with it, if you get wrong\no key from the client reject the request. It's not 100% proof either since requests could be faked and someone could grab someone else's IMEI and key and face all the requests.

welcome to broken software copy protection world :-)