Android widget with changing text

Question

I'm attempting to create an incredibly simple widget that changes the text displayed every 5s or so. However I've had major headaches attempting to get this to work. Obviously I can't use the onUpdate call as it's a minimum of every 30min. Currently my solution uses an Timer in an extended Service class, which is as ugly as hell and tends to run like a dog after a while. Is there a "clean" way of doing this, ie. in a manner that doesn't require a Widget, UpdateService, Timers etc.

I'm not asking for an entire solution, just a pointer as to how to go about doing this in an efficient manner.

Thanks, John

Answer 1

you might want to look into timer tasks, thanks

Answer 2

Use a CountdownTimer:

 new CountdownTimer(5000, 1000) {

     public void onTick(long millisUntilFinished) {
         mTextField.setText("seconds remaining: " + millisUntilFinished / 1000);
     }

     public void onFinish() {
         mTextField.setText("done!");
     }
  }.start();