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Android 1.5 SDK Is Released
RadiusK writes "Starting today, developers can get an early look at the SDK for the next version of the Android platform. Version 1.5 introduces APIs for features such as soft keyboards, home screen widgets, live folders, and speech recognition. At the developer site, you can download the early-look Android 1.5 SDK, read important information about upgrading your Eclipse plugin and existing projects, and learn about what's new and improved in Android 1.5."
Feature and usability-wise is it getting close to the iPhone?
I have a lot of "toys" at home, including a GTA01 and a Nokia N800. While a lot better in some technical aspects, and in most philosophical ones, they all fade in comparison to the iPhone. No SyncML, no PIM suite (GPE doesn't count as it's not really integrated to the platform).
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.
Then I am sure the people who own Android phones thank you. DRM is not something they want, you can keep that stuff for the mac fans.
That might be the case for now, with bleeding-edge early adopters making up a big portion of Android's userbase. But the huge selection of apps for the iPhone came when developers realized it was the next gold rush. I think what you'll see on Android is a ton of apps with the DRM built into them, free apps that you have to pay to unlock.
I suppose that's the tradeoff. Android's openness lets you program cooler stuff, but shifts the burden of protecting your work to the developer.
...now how about getting some more phones that can actually use it?
People with Android phones, shockingly, buy them because they work well and get on with their lives. They aren't lifestyle choices. They aren't something that fills a hole in their sad and empty lives.
So, no, Android phones aren't:
* Carried in the most visible way everywhere in public places hoping everyone will notice just how 'special' they are for what phone they own
* Brought up in every single conversation with every single person they meet in public
* Used in the most annoyingly over manner in public places with a desperate and sad hope that people will ask them about their phone
Samsung
LG
Asus
Sony
Motorola
all have multiple Android based phones coming out in 2009. Companies like Motorola are building a 200 person team just to focus on Android phone development alone. It is rapidly becoming the default platform for cellphones.
I keep hearing a lot of people ask this, especially from Symbian devs who can't see how their image processing code would even work on java.
Seeing as the underlying OS is all C/C++ it really beats me why they don't expose the 'environment' to C coders too. Then we'd see some fancy fast applications on Android that might make other phone manufacturers look on with envy.
There again, if they released a C API, you'd be able to run ruby/python and perl code on it too!
Seems someone at Google didn't fully realize that their low fanfare and subtle product roll out system wouldn't translate well to consumer electronics. I was very excited to hear about Android in a Wired article last year and I was pleased to see it's just around the corner. But in my opinion the launch was terrible. There was little coverage in mainstream media, I didn't see any commercials or marketing of any kind. They should have waited till they had more carriers on board, more cell phone / electronics manufacturers on board and launched with a huge marketing campaign. I would argue that Google has a more marketable IP than Apple does (almost everyone uses something Google related and most people have a generally positive view on Google), and if Android was launched properly it would have easily gone head to head with the iPhone (particularily if it wasn't rushed out and maintained all initially stated functionality).
The problem is that mobile phone apps pretty much have to be sandboxed, and that's a lot harder to do with C/C++ than it is with something like Java. The tools available on modern PC's for sandboxing applications don't even work all that well most of the time (see Vista). Now imagine that instead of a full-powered PC with all sorts of extensions and opcodes and so on, you're running on a much more limited platform. (sidenote: technically Android isn't pure Java, they've created their own bytecode, so they aren't beholden to Sun's iron grasp)
sig? uhh, umm, ok