project built succesfull in Unity and installed on android but doesn't run properly

Question

I created an app in Unity where you get a start screen with some GUI elements: a top bar with some title graphics and a scrollView with buttons that load dynamically using c# and xml that allow me to active canvases depending on the pressed button... this all works perfectly when I run it on pc but when I try to install it on android, it only shows the "Made with Unity" animation and loads the top bar and the background.. I just can't get any gamelogic to run..

I even forced the first level to run, and it switches canvas but nothing else, no sprites loaded into the GUI images, no listviews being populated, nothing..

I then tried to load a canvas that should be able to search for levels/chapters with an inputfield and then display all chapters that contain that text.. I can select the inputfield, the onscreen keyboard appears and I can type text, but again, the list isn't being populated..

I did have a lot of trouble getting the app to build (commandInvocationFailure, ..) and searched the web for every error I got and kept getting new errors untill I found a "sweet spot":

• Unity 5.6
• SDK that came with newest Android Studio
• Downgraded tools in SDK to version 25.2.5
• Had to copy zipalign.jar from build-tools to tools
• downgraded JDK from 9.1 to 8.1
• install location "automatic"

this allowed me to build my app but it's extremely fragile, one wrong setting and it won't build..

I'm trying to run the app on a Samsung Galaxy Tab4 (Android 5.1 Lollipop) I installed the proper API with SDK Manager but when I set the API level in Unity I can only select "highest installed" or it won't build. I tried installing on a Samsung Galaxy Tab A (Android Nougat) but there I get a "Not Installed" message.. (third party sources is checked)

The build itself is quite large (1.7gig but has over 3000images and sounds which I downsampled so all resources are around 500MB)

(the entire app is made out of GUI elements)

anyone who encountered this problem or can shed some light on what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

Found the answer: app depends heavily on xml and adressing an xml file on android is different than on a pc.. so app worked but couldn't find the xml so no data was loaded..