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ORly? What's all this, then?

http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

once they can run Dwarf fortress, Photoshop, Valgrind, Audacity, TrueCrypt, and display full video at a reasonable speed then it will be a valid replacement.

Valgrind and Audacity are free software and can be ported if someone has the time. There exist other roguelikes, and I'm told Dfterm lets you run Dwarf Fortress on a remote server. Some Android tablets support disk encryption. But if the fact that Adobe has so far declined to port Photoshop to Android makes Android tablets not PCs, then three Dell PCs that run Ubuntu (one at home, one at work, and my laptop) aren't PCs either.

I'll also need the ability to store all my stuff

Some Android devices support USB mass storage.

run whatever programs I want

Turn on "Allow installation of applications from unknown sources" and you can run whatever Android program you want that has an APK available.

display to multiple screens

I wonder whether the ability to run Android apps on TVs could be part of working around this.

But yeah, props to the Android for doing what others cannot.

Agreed 100 percent.

Lets just ignore the fact that 75% of Android phones are on versions of Android that are (almost) 2 years old.

But hey, fuck Apple! Right?

As long as someone is doing worse then everything is okay, right?

The Android emulator runs on a number of platforms. I suspect ( like someone else who has mentioned this in this thread ), that they have a stripped down version which runs without the GUI.

Lets just ignore the fact that 75% of Android phones are on versions of Android that are (almost) 2 years old.

But hey, fuck Apple! Right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy

Lets just ignore the fact that 75% of Android phones are on versions of Android that are (almost) 2 years old.

But hey, fuck Apple! Right?

Oh, the Android Open Accessory protocol? That makes use of standard USB interfaces to connect to external hardware like sensors, speakers, clocks, exercise machines, etc.?

Great news! So which ready to use peripherals can one buy that uses that? Oh, right. None.

Oh, the Android Open Accessory protocol? That makes use of standard USB interfaces to connect to external hardware like sensors, speakers, clocks, exercise machines, etc.?

http://source.android.com/
I'm sorry, you were saying something stupid?

You should read the post you're responding to before responding.
That's not the latest version. OEMs that pay up have had access to that shit for 3-6 months and are actively working on shit that is one or two major versions ahead of the open source version at all times. For all OEMs that want to seriously compete in the market, that code is useless. For all hobbyists that want to embrace an open source platform, that code is nearly useless. Additionally, it doesn't include the core Google applications, which are only "not part of Android" if you don't consider the overall user experience that the marketing campaign espouses to be part of Android.

If OEMs want to compete in the big leagues they have to pay up. Smaller OEMs will release cheaper phones on the older (open) versions, then if they're moderately successful they'll release higher-end phones on the older (open) versions and rush out a patch when the open version gets updated (and then users will beg their carriers to push it out OTA). Then they realize that situation is shitty and either stick to the older version with cheaper phones, or pony up cash and lick the boot of Google to compete in the high end.

If hobbyists want to do shit they either do shit that's useful to no one because you need open hardware, or they do shit that only half works because it's based on closed (but well poked at) hardware, or they do shit that works but involves the ol' *wink wink* *nudge nudge* about what the ROM was really based off of and where you can get the Google Play Store, Google Maps, etc., which makes it legally dubious and a failure in terms of being open source.

You may as well say XBOX Live is free and point at the silver membership as proof while saying "It's still XBOX Live!".

http://source.android.com/
I'm sorry, you were saying something stupid?

Yeah, the tutorial cleverly focuses on layout expressed in XML for the first several pages, hiding any actual program code. The first mention of Java appears in a source code filename in Starting an activity: "If you're using a different IDE or the command line tools, create a new file named DisplayMessageActivity.java".

Yeah, the tutorial cleverly focuses on layout expressed in XML for the first several pages, hiding any actual program code. The first mention of Java appears in a source code filename in Starting an activity: "If you're using a different IDE or the command line tools, create a new file named DisplayMessageActivity.java".

The Fire breaks Android compatibility: http://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html

Android compatibility is free and doesn't oblige you to pay Google or include the Play store or any Google applications.

Android supports all Kindle Fire resolutions (1024x600,1280x800,1920x1200) and there are Android compatible devices available supporting those resolutions, that isn't the reason Amazon made it incompatible.

You've got several things wrong..

1. Don't use any official Android distributions (operate as a niche/self-supported market, ie. Amazon)
2. Use any combination of Android and forked android-derived distributions, but can't join the OHA
3. Join the OHA and use only an official Google Android derived OS

That's completely wrong.

You have several choices:

1) Develop an Android compatible device, compatible with existing Android applications, and don't pay a cent to Google or anyone else for Android.

Sell your devices with getjar app store, Amazon app store, Bing as default search, Nokia maps, change the UI, whatever the hell you want as long as you don't break compatibility.

2) Do 1) and also join OHA. Still don't pay a cent to Google, still sell your devices with getjar app store, Amazon app store, Bing as default search, Nokia maps, change the UI, whatever the hell you want as long as you don't break compatibility.

3) Do 1) and 2) and also license Google applications and the Google Play app store.

4) Use the open source Android code (definition of open) and do whatever the hell you want with it like Amazon, modify it, make it incompatible with Google's Store and current Android applications, don't pay anything to Google, don't join the OHA, get the source code for new versions of Android soon after Google announces them, make your own app store.

Acer chose option 3) for their current devices. Google said if they're doing option 4) with Alibaba, they cannot also do option 2) and/or 3). And Acer made their choice, nothing was forced on them. All Google could do was force Acer to leave the OHA and refuse to license Google Play and other Google applications to them. Acer could still make Android compatible devices, even continue to sell their current devices with the Amazon app store for example. They chose to remain part of the OHA.

the OEMs are already way behind in keeping official Android up to date in their design and production pipelines even with that inside track and help from Google. An OEM on its own trying to make an official Android device is thus at a large disadvantage against OEMs that are part of the OHA.

That's simply not true. Some of the first non Google devices to come out with Android 4.0 were from Chinese low end manufacturers who are not part of the OHA, much before the bigger well known OHA members. That was because the OEMs insist on customizing their devices to distinguish them from stock Android. And far from being uncompetitive, those manufacturers have been incredibly successful. Some have gone on to license Google Play and Google Apps. Want to beat Google? Make your own app store and your own apps that are better than Google's proprietary apps like Maps Gmail etc. Amazon are trying. Acer didn't want to take up that challenge. No one forced Acer to do anything. They made a choice.

Andy Rubin, who runs Android development at Google, said Aliyun was a non-compatible version of Android, which weakens the ecosystem. He pointed out that the Open Handset Alliance provides all the tools necessary to make it compatible.

No, what weakens the ecosystem are the Open Handset Alliance members who promise to keep their phones up to date, then renege.

I bought an Xperia Pro in 2011 because Sony announced they'd be getting Android 4. It's currently running Android 2.3, released in 2010, because Sony have completely cocked up the rollout. The rollout started back in May, then mysteriously stopped. It might have something to do with it being so buggy it's unusable (hardcoded to AZERTY keyboards, even if you've got a QWERTY keyboard), but we have no way of knowing because Sony won't talk. They announced it was being rolled out a second time at the beginning of August, but there's no evidence of that in their shitty update software. Customer support stonewall, just saying that the rollout is ongoing. This isn't even for the latest version of Android, it's for last year's version.

This is what's damaging the ecosystem. iOS developers can happily target iOS 5+, released a year ago, and get the vast majority of users (more than 80%). If you targeted the year old Android 4+, you'd only be getting about 22% of users.

Segalovich suggested Google was guilty of foul play with its Chrome browser, which he said made it difficult for users to choose rival search engines, including Yahoo, Bing and Yandex, over its own market-leading product.

LOL. Click Menu -> Settings and then choose your favourite search from a dropbox.

"You cannot [send any code] to Android, it's semi-open source. You cannot send anything, just see and watch [how the code is changed by Google] If you download an application it may not work properly if it's not Android marketplace.

LOL

At least choose better sources for your FUD, FFS.

They only open it because they used Linux as the base

Only kernel has to be open. Anything else is open under APL

You don't even get to give your users access to Google Play so that they could buy and download apps and games. No, you don't get any of that. It's Google's way or Amazon, SlideMe, GetJar, Opera Apps, ...

Good troll, mate! Please, do go on giving Android haters reputation of ignorant FUDders.

There you go again, shitting out your incorrect FUD.

The Android AOSP website:
http://source.android.com/

Here you can find the information and source code you need to build an Android-compatible device.

Android is an open-source software stack for mobile devices, and a corresponding open-source project led by Google. We created Android in response to our own experiences launching mobile apps. We wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other. That's why we created Android, and made its source code open.

Can you not read or what, let me repost for your idiot ass:

From the Android Open Source Project home page: http://source.android.com/

Here you can find the information and source code you need to build an Android-compatible device.

Android is an open-source software stack for mobile devices, and a corresponding open-source project led by Google. We created Android in response to our own experiences launching mobile apps. We wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other. That's why we created Android, and made its source code open.

Hey stupid asshole, why are you spewing your untrue shit everywhere:

Android / AOSP Home Page:
http://source.android.com/

What the fuck are you babbling on about?

AOSP Website:
http://source.android.com/

GEE, what do you think the source subdomain for android.com means? From wikipedia: The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is led by Google, and is tasked with the maintenance and development of Android.

Where do you fucking morons come from?

My understanding is that Android 4.1 is the first version of the OS that can lock downloaded applications to an account.

It goes further than that. Google Play actually encrypts the download with a device-specific key. Thus a specific .apk is locked to the device and can't be copied between devices, even if they belong to the same account. This is deemed to be OK for legitimate users with multiple devices under the same account - they just have the inconvenience of needing to download the same app multiple times.

REF: App Encryption at: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/jelly-bean.html

That said, I don't think this is going to help with piracy in the long term - someone will find a way around it. And don't stick with iOS by kidding yourself that there's no piracy - to this day people still have Sharing Parties to copy apps between friends' iOS devices, restrictions be damned.

What idiots/macfags have modded this insightful?

Android is establishing itself as an exceptional option for controlling UAVs and other autonomous vehicles.

http://developer.android.com/tools/adk/index.html

http://code.google.com/p/androuav/

http://code.google.com/p/aeroquad/

The proper way to handle realtime hardware interfacing in *nix is with a dedicated microcontroller that isn't affected by kernel scheduling (which isn't realtime).

Therefore just spend $10 on a microcontroller board of your choosing and link it to the Nexus through USB or Bluetooth or Wifi or NFC. Let the microcontroller handle the hardware interfacing without latency, while Linux handles high level issues. Best of both worlds.

The lack of GPIO pins on a Nexus is pretty much an asset, as it keeps you from doing the wrong thing. And Android even has an SDK for exactly this situation, the ADK -- Accessory Development Kit. This is typically used with something like the Arduino ADK, but there are tons of equivalent but much cheaper boards available for the same purpose.

Burn the mother fuckers already, and get on with your life.

Yeah, but those of us who don't have a life can use half-dead Android phones as Arduino controllers.

  Or we could use them with AndroUAV to control our own drones.

http://www.amarino-toolkit.net/

http://developer.android.com/tools/adk/index.html

http://www.instructables.com/id/Androino-Talk-with-an-Arduino-from-your-Android-d/

http://code.google.com/p/androuav/

The Android Open Accessory library provides a basic communication channel with devices via USB. What you do with it is up to you.

(It doesn't have any inherent support for audio, and you can't route the system audio over it. But you could write code which outputs a custom audio channel from your app.)

Keep in mind that the Open Accessory library uses a custom protocol, so won't work with things such as a standard USB DAC.

(For that, you'd want to use the USB Host mode APIs: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/usb/host.html. The same caveats about not being able to route the system audio still apply.)

Google will lock down Android and they and Apple will control mobile with an iron hand,

Oh dear, credibility is so hard to come by and so easy to shed.

Android is open source, and Google is opening code releases faster with each version. They may be tightening controls on their repository to combat malware, but the OS is free and staying that way.

http://source.android.com/

Android share of the smartphone market is around 60%, roughly double that of Apple. Apple may have an "Iron hand", but that just means the more they tighten their grip, the more market share will slip through their fingers.

http://niche-marketing-production.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Sales-Mar-121.png

I'm a developer who has wanted to break away from enterprise in this sort of game dev, I would throw money at this product to give it a chance had it not been for all the strange things about it.

You know you could just learn Android and Android game programming and not worry about the Ouya.

The developer's tools are free and there are tons of tutorials on the web and YouTube.

And it's not like there aren't a few hundred brands of Android smartphones, tablets and, yes, even media boxes.

Yes, there have been many failed attempts at putting Linux at the forefront in the consumer space but just because everybody tried and failed before doesn't mean it isn't possible. Stop rolling your eyes. Android will be an indisputable first class Linux when all their patches hit mainline (if that hasn't happened already). Maybe not GNU/Linux but Linux is pulling the levers and turning the dials underneath just like it is everywhere else it lives. And if you doubt that, check this out.

I'd rather have a Cray XK6 made out of ice cream. On an equally frivolous note did the Cray run Ice cream Sandwich ?

I'd rather have a Cray XK6 simulate a Fukashima reactor meltdown while I have real ice cream melt in my hand, than vice verse. Seriously, the myopic mindset that thinks this shit up using taxpayer money rather than political shareholders assets goes to show how far chaos theory will iterate before some level headed voters put a stop, once and for all, to this bullshit.

I'd rather have a Cray XK6 made out of ice cream. On an equally frivolous note did the Cray run Ice cream Sandwich ?

And if they go to the App Store, are they told that they are not running a telephone?

I'd rather have a Cray XK6 made out of ice cream. On an equally frivolous note did the Cray run Ice cream Sandwich ?

None at all.

Most development platforms suffer from some degree of fragmentation. Even Apple's desktop platform, which is happier than most to just leave behind older versions of the software, took a while to shake off cruft leftover from the PowerPC days (which was itself shaking off cruft from the 68K days).

That doesn't mean you can't rate platforms on the degree of fragmention though. And here Android loses, badly, to just about everything else. There are 4 major versions of the Android software still in heavy use, with Jelly Bean adding a fifth one. Each of those major releases has multiple vendor customizations and some disparity in major application design issues like screen sizes and input methods. It's a QA nightmare.

The situation is no better for Windows, but variation in desktop capabilities doesn't seem to hamstring application developers too badly anymore. How long has it been since you found a desktop app that couldn't deal with the screen being resized or with the type of mouse changing? Those things used to be serious fragmentation issues too; nowadays that's faded into something application designers can safely ignore most of the time when developing on Windows. It looks like Windows 8 might alter things badly enough to bring the display issues back into the limelight again, at which point I expect class of "Windows fragmentation" to increase.

The iPhone has kept the variations along these two major axes (screen/inputs) low enough to keep fragmentation from being a drag on the platform. Apple has also done a decent job of keeping the software platform moving forward for older devices. Android has done neither of those things, which is why it deservedly gets beat with the "fragmentation" hammer so often. 80% of the Android market is running 2.2 or 2.3 stil by Google's own figures, so software from 2010. Any iPhone user will tell you the idea of still running the software version from 1.5 years ago would be crazy. Platform statistics easily show how fast iPhone users update; the update times on that platform is weeks for most users, not months or years.

Tell that to all the Android device owners left out in the cold

There are only 4 "Android" devices at this point and none of them are being left out in the cold. If you have a phone that purports to be Android and isn't getting updated within a reasonable couple of years of ownership then maybe it isn't really Android in the first place. Maybe you should call it Touchwiz-droid or MotoBlur-droid or Sense-droid. But blaming the platform for what the OEM's do when you can quite easily avoid the whole issue by purchasing a real Android is just ludicrous. Frankly you sound like a fucking entitled crybaby.

Getting Android updates is easy. It's called get a device with the word Nexus in the name. This has been discussed ad nauseum but trolls like you just keep forgetting it for some reason. Educate yourself, fool.

As far as I know Android has massive issues with accessing the call voice stream. There have been bugs registered with hundreds of angry users yelling for better support for this.

Take a look at this: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaRecorder.AudioSource.html
There are VOICE_DOWNLINK & VOICE_UPLINK streams, but people accessing them get exceptions instead of working streams most of the time...

Has JB improved that at all? I'll need to go test if my current phone has these streams working or not. And how about actually playing audio into the call? AFAIK old symbian phones had this.

--Coder

I realize your money's already spent but the WiFi Motorola Xoom is the only 10 inch tablet with AOSP support. Samsung should be ashamed of themselves for not updating your device in a timely manner but in the future, I'd at least have a peek at that page I linked before putting money down.

Well, according to the AOSP page for device builds, the Nexus S 4G has been brought back into the officially supported fold so there is hope for the CDMA Galaxy Nexus owners.

Devices with web browsers tend to have libraries that implement DEFLATE, even if only for Content-Encoding: gzip in HTTP. In fact, Android has java.util.zip.ZipFile that handles not only DEFLATE but the entire zip file format. If a device's application acceptance policy is permissive enough to admit a general-purpose emulator,* then it's permissive enough to admit an unzip program that acts as a thin wrapper around the built-in zip file support.

* By this I mean an emulator that isn't cryptographically locked to a specific ROM. Official emulators distributed through the official app stores for Wii, DSi, 3DS, iPhone, and iPad won't run any game other than the one they come with.

Latest market stats (as of July 2) say 10.9% are on ICS and slowly growing. 64% are still on some version of Gingerbread and 2.4% on Honeycomb tablets.

Growth rate might experience an uptick in the next couple months as carriers roll out HTC's ICS upgrades for a few of their phones, such as my Incredible S.

Can I run Android on my PC

Sure.

SSH Persistent Tunnels : It's GPLv3, complete with building instructions:
http://code.google.com/p/ssh-persistent-tunnel/

but for $1.50 you can just save yourself the hassle of setting up the android SDK and install the binary from Google Play, complete with automatic upgrades etc...
https://market.android.com/details?id=org.ayal.SPT

You should check out the support libraries, and ActionBarSherlock. There are backports of the most important ICS APIs so you can still use them. I use an app that feels ICS native but it still runs on older devices.

Also how about virtual machines for testing for all those, with all known display sizes as easy-to-configure test options and atomatic generation of binaries for each version.

You mean this one? http://developer.android.com/tools/devices/emulator.html AVD makes it pretty simple to set up most configurations.

Likewise Eclipse makes it simple enough to target any OS version. The problem is if you use and ICS-specifc function, it won't work on devices with earlier versions of Android. As a result, most of us design/target 2.2 and ignore all the recent cool stuff.

Am I supposed to be impressed or something?

Interested, perhaps.

Android has some serious tools to help with robotics and autonomous vehicles, and being open source, it's nice to learn on, and free.

Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK)

http://developer.android.com/tools/adk/index.html

Arduino SDK board

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK

There's been a huge surge in robotics projects as a result.

Yep, I use that too. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.stericson.permissions)

Actually, Android has most of what Eben asks for, but managing it (even with apps like Permissions Denied LBE Privacy Guard or PDroid) is complicated and requires understanding of the risks.

"A central design point of the Android security architecture is that no application, by default, has permission to perform any operations that would adversely impact other applications, the operating system, or the user. This includes reading or writing the user's private data (such as contacts or e-mails), reading or writing another application's files, performing network access, keeping the device awake, etc."

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/security/permissions.html

Whoa, don't tell me Apple is playing follow the leader with Google. I thought Apple always thinks of everything first, and this is why they like to sue everybody.

Why not? Surely Amazon can advertise it as "andoid kindle" if they wish.

Am I missing something? Trademark infringement seems like it would stop them.

(Do the older black-and-white kindles have android software?)

Linux kernel, but no Android.

http://source.android.com/

Welcome to Android

Here you can find the information and source code you need to build an Android-compatible device.

Android is an open-source software stack for mobile devices, and a corresponding open-source project led by Google. We created Android in response to our own experiences launching mobile apps. We wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other. That's why we created Android, and made its source code open.

Help yourself.

http://source.android.com/