MapView works with Eclipse install but not adb install

Question

When I run my application on a physical phone from within Eclipse, my Google MapView works perfectly. If export the app to an apk file and install it to the same phone from the command line with adb then the MapView comes up but shows only the Google logo and grid - no map tiles appear. I'm using a debug application key and a GMaps API key generated with that debug key. I've verified that this happens on both the Droid and N1 phones. The logcat looks identical in both the working and non-working cases - no obvious error messages.

Any ideas what might be wrong?

Answer 1

Are you really sure you're exporting with the debugkey? If so, do you have an active data connection on your phone? That's also required.

Answer 2

I think I may have found the source of the problem. There appears to be a terminology mixup in the Android docs: http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/app-signing.html

The sentence "You can not [sic] publish an application that is signed with the debug key generated by the SDK tools" is ambiguous. I believe "publish" here means "Export" in Eclipse.

I'll do some testing and see if that's the case. Stand by...