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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.
# Camera & Gallery
* Video recording
* Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
# Bluetooth
* Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
* Auto-pairing
* Improved handsfree experience
but I just what T-Mobil to roll out stereo Blue tooth..now!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anyone here written code for Android? How do you like it?
/...
the emulator's great, but I would like the DEV phone and utilize my AT&T connection. Thanks for the post.
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
I'm hoping the API will eventually include some kind of anti-piracy options. I wish this version took some steps in that direction, but doesn't look it's going to happen anytime soon. I think the Android market is going to be huge, but until there's some kind of download protection for Android apps, I've got to stick to developing for the iPhone.
The only ones I know are either horridly expensive (the German phone), provider locked AND not available here, the other one (openmoko) ... well coughing is to dieing from a HIV infection like buggy is to ... Oh and that one's bankrupt too.
I'd love to get unbelievably exited about this phone operating system. Except ... it's got a bit of an emacs problem ... this phone operating system does sooooo many things sooooo great ... except it doesn't seem to operate any actual phones ...
"Feature and usability-wise is it getting close to the iPhone?"
What a fucking moron!
Android is being put on cellphones from every single major company this year: Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, Motorola, Asus, etc. Android is being readied for netbooks from the major PC OEMs like HP and Dell.
Android has quickly become the standard and default platform for a vast array of hardware devices. The number of Android based devices is soon going to be gigantic.
But will you wub it will all your heart and make your sad and pathetic little life fulfilled like your precious little iPhone does?
No one gives a shit retard.
Considering there's a cost to the phone, unlike Gmail or something that's a service, they actually need to get a product out the door.
> The android has escaped! It is programmed to CRUSH KILL DESTROY! Run!
IDAK, is that you?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Picking up Android development was as easy as it could be.
Just downloaded Eclipse and installed the Android plugin. Everything is just standard Java that everyone already is familiar with. Standard OpenGL for the graphics stuff.
Tons of well documented example code and documentation.
The best part has been the people from Google so far. They are the most helpful and bright employees I've ever encountered or dealt with doing development support.
The only thing that has been an occasional pain has been there were some major changes from the pre-1.0 Android SDK that lost of old code was written for. Sometimes when looking for an example of a certain API feature you will get tripped up looking at old code. This is getting less and less of a problem as time moves forward, but there are still Android dev books that come from ancient versions of the Android APIs.
...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.
Picking up Android development was as easy as it could be. Just downloaded Eclipse and installed the Android plugin.
So, doesn't work with vi or emacs, eh?
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
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).
Hey Google - have you fixed the mail reader so I can view messages composed by someone using Pine (or one of its derivatives) instead of just seeing "null" where the body should be?
All of the flash is nice, but getting the basics working would be better. This issue is supposedly fixed in the codebase, but I don't see anything in the 1.5 release notes indicating that it's included.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Android 1.5 Highlights
April 2009
The Android 1.5 platform introduces many new features for users and developers. The list below provides an overview of the changes.
User interface refinements
* System-wide:
o Refinement of all core UI elements
o Animated window transitions (off by default)
o Accelerometer-based application rotations
* UI polish for:
o In-call experience
o Contacts, Call log, and Favorites
o SMS & MMS
o Browser
o Gmail
o Calendar
o Email
o Camera & Gallery
o Application management
Performance improvements
* Faster Camera start-up and image capture
* Much faster acquisition of GPS location (powered by SUPL AGPS)
* Smoother page scrolling in Browser
* Speedier GMail conversation list scrolling
New features
* On-screen soft keyboard
o Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
o Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
o User dictionary for custom words
* Home screen
o Widgets
+ Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search
o Live folders
* Camera & Gallery
o Video recording
o Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
* Bluetooth
o Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
o Auto-pairing
o Improved handsfree experience
* Browser
o Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
o Copy 'n paste in browser
o Search within a page
o User-selectable text-encoding
o UI changes include:
+ Unified Go and Search box
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
It doesn't matter. You still have a layer in between the hardware and the code, which slows down speed, bloats memory, and drains battery life (due to needing more CPU power). I don't want to use that as a development platform. Especially when there's no sense in not releasing a C API, the libraries they're using are all written in C or C++.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Ah, I see the Javaistas are out in force modding me down. Guess what- Java is not the ideal programming language for many people and many situations. A limited power, limited memory, battery life dependent device is one of those. Deal with it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
# Google applications
* View Google Talk friends' status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and Email applications
* Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
* Upload videos to Youtube
* Upload photos on Picasa
Hivemind harvest in progress..
I'm impressed with my G1 out-of-the-box (coming from a T-Mo Dash). And as long as there are significant improvements I will be delighted with it.
I use Eclipse for Java development on my job but I didn't want my leisure coding activity to feel like work so I went poking around. I stumbled across http://phonegap.com/ which is an add-on to the Eclipse/Android SDK that allows developers to create apps using html and javascript.
I downloaded, installed it, and manage to compile the sample code pretty easily. Reminds me a bit of ForwardPass for the PocketPC.
The Java VM doesn't mean only java. python and ruby can be compiled to JVM bytecode
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If they wanted sandbox they should have coded it in LUA.
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
I like google, but latest Android versions that had two distinct public and wasnt so open, some points into product certificates and Chrome that sent everything that we write to google... makes me have one step behind in all products that they have released and will release one day. Because this I don't use google produts anymore, even restricting gmail use either. Yes Google is a very good company with good products, but your policy isn't so clear.
Oh shit, no! Randomly rotating apps everytime you move your phone. Why did they have to copy the iPhone? The accelerometer is the most worthless gimmic ever put into a gadget.
First off, its not a requisite that a VM add significant overhead to code. Its true that it can't have zero overhead, but its not true that it automatically causes a massive CPU performance hit and memory explosion. I'll point to one benchmark that at least indicates JVM performance can exceed C++ performance, http://kano.net/javabench/ . (To be clear, Android does not use a JVM, it uses its own VM).
Second, if you base your language choice for a mainstream, general purpose platform, solely on code efficiency, you're making a mistake. Speed is *not* all that matters. Portability and *programmer* efficiency are major factors to consider if you want a successful platform. In these dimensions the Java language and VM execution environments tend to be superior.
Third, for the vast majority of programs, its the code you write, regardless of language that makes the most difference. Languages create far fewer slow programs than poor programmers and designers.
None of this is to say that their aren't benefits to native code, and in the long run Android should provide a way to write native code for those tiny bits of the program that are doing heavy algorithmic work. What I do mean to say is that saying the best language for all your code is C[++] is incorrect (unless all you write is heavy algorithmic code, most applications have more than this).
it's an easy pickup, even, if like me, you'd put off learning java until you really needed it
the integrated debugger in eclipse is excellent too - download the SDK now (not 1.5) you can do development onto the emultaor until you get a phone
People with Android phones, shockingly, buy them because they work well and get on with their lives.
That's why I bought my iPhone. That's why everyone I know bought an iPhone. Because we wanted something that Just Works and so many phones before, had Just Not Worked Worth a Damn.
They aren't lifestyle choices. They aren't something that fills a hole in their sad and empty lives.
Well I don't know how empty your life is, but it's certainly sad that instead of enjoying your phone you see fit to bring down other phones you fear people perceive as "better". I myself like the Android platform a lot, I just see it's not as mature yet.
Carried in the most visible way everywhere in public places hoping everyone will notice just how 'special' they are for what phone they own
Honestly, who does that? I have never seen a person just carrying one around to display. They are usually tucked away in purses or pockets - just like other phone.
Used in the most annoyingly over manner in public places with a desperate and sad hope that people will ask them about their phone
So because iPhone owners actually USE the phones they carry they are arrogant? Seems like you are the one proclaiming how much better a person you are because of the brand of phone you own. I personally don't care what phone other people have, or if they know what I have.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From the changelog it would appear that there are still no bluetooth API's. This makes it pretty much the only phone available that doesn't have this. Too bad.
Though I agree copy-paste is a useful feature, it's not the be-all and end-all of an OS. There are ways to add phone numbers that you receive in an email into your address book.
Yes! Thank god I am not alone in having seen one of the scariest sci fi episodes ever.
First off- yes, VMs do cause huge performance hit in real world applications. It's been proved again and again and again. You have one highly biased and long since disproven benchmark- http://www.freewebs.com/godaves/javabench_revisited/
Secondly- speed and memory efficiency is the most important issue on limited resource platforms. But ignoring that- the portability of Java is more smoke and mirrors than reality. "Write once, debug everywhere" is the reality. AS for programmer efficiency- using the language your team know best is what rules that. Maximizing programmer efficiency leads you to support the most languages possible. In which case the best thing to do is write a C API, which can be easily wrapped in java, perl, python, etc.
Third- yes and no. Sure, picking an O(n) algorithm when there's an O(1) is something no language will overcome. But language still makes double digit differences.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Mobile phone apps don't need to be sandboxed. Thats just garbage propaganda from the carriers.
All you do is put the sensitive parts (like the cell network interface) on a separate CPU (like OpenMoko does)
For one thing, the mobile world doesn't run exclusively on the ARM instruction set. Lower end chips tend to be Qualcomm. Allowing native code reduces portability, so they probably want to discourage it.
cool. But Android doesn't use JVM bytecode, they developed their own, called Dalvik, to get round Sun's licencing.
Did you accidentally the whole verb? Yes, I've "played" with a Nokia. The UI sucks ass. Apart from that, Nokia didn't repair a defective phone I bought 2 months before it broke, so I'll never buy a Nokia again. Really, only Android can really compete with the iPhone OS. The Blackberry OS is passable, but it's not there yet. Windows Mobile, before anyone mentions it, is the worse OS, in any platform, I had the misfortune to deal with.
Well, maybe you don't mind having to reboot your phone, but having my phone crash and having to wait to restart it pisses the heck out of me. I don't want FooCorp's CoolUtility to be able to crash my phone causing me to drop my call in the middle of talking to my boss or something.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
Yep, I'm one of those devs. I'd love to try android, but even with native code I'd to use a lot of tricks to make image registration code run on the mobile CPU with acceptable frame rate. There is no hope it will run on Java (some benchmarks show 10-100 times slowdown, but even 30% slowdown would kill it). Of cause solution could be if image processing/registration would be implemented as a part of native android distribution itself, as was suggested in some discussions. Even better if it would use DSP/IP/FPGA. But those are pipe dreams of cause.