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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."
# Camera & Gallery
* Video recording
* Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
# Bluetooth
* Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
* Auto-pairing
* Improved handsfree experience
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.
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.
In a word, yes.
I have a G1. It works well considering it is 1st generation hardware/software. No A2DP, but same situation as iPhone (3.0/Cupcake). Other than that, software-wise the widgets are smooth, and you can actually run services in the background. Some of the applications need improving, like the mail client needs IMAP IDLE support, etc.. but it's getting there. You can get a custom cupcake build for the G1 now which fixes a lot of those problems.
Hardware-wise, the G1 is not as pretty, but the upcoming devices should give the iPhone a run for its money. The really good thing about it though is that it's got the right number of real buttons, which make navigation a lot more manageable.
Talking about the N800, OS2008 is great. Nokia has been doing a lot for mobile Linux and I plan on upgrading my trusty ole 770 running OS2008 to whatever device they have for Maemo 5.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
...now how about getting some more phones that can actually use it?
I did a project for the Android Challenge.
I'm working with a Mac and Eclipse is not the most user friendly IDE on this platform.
The process is smooth enough, forget about Linux, it's all Java based. I do Java stuff 10h a day so I felt right at home. It takes a couple of days to feel right about the suggested class design. Appart from that, I felt it was all very standard stuff, nothing really amazing, persistence is nice enough with sqlite but that's about it. You won't find any major revolution in there, it's very close to a simple standard Java application. So I didn't do more code since (it was based on SDK 1.1 if I remember correctly) and since I didn't even win the right to carry on with the Challenge, I left everything as it was (I got good technical marks, but the profitability of the idea wasn't there...). You see, if you didn't win somehow you didn't have access to the new SDK, unlike all the other lucky bastards. So why bother...
Now I've got to get back to the Web SDK of the iPhone and the CSS transformations, these are rocking my days (actually more my nights).
No PIM suite on the Nokia one? All Nokia phones here an germany have PIM, SyncML, and tons of features that no iPhone ever had. The series 60 and series 80 phones from Nokia are pretty much a real OS. With everything that you would expect from a computer with such a limited physical interface.
I guess I will never get, why people like a phone that is already technologically outdated and still overpriced, and adds even more annoyances to the package (like not being able to even input some important characters, being locked-down, and having the display turn into a smudgy piece of shit after 5 seconds of usage)...
Are looks and the name Apple really that important to you? Or is it, that the other phones that they offer in the USA are even worse?
I mean, I'd love to make a business out of importing European and Japanese phones into the US market. There's no reason you should be that limited, that you think, the iPhone is great...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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).
I still think it's incredible that there is no Google toolbar for Chrome.
I wrote an app which is now on the market. The good:
Java. OK, actually I hate Java. But I'd hate Objective-C a lot more. Implementing a simple crash reporter around my core logic was about 10 lines of Java code, and it works every time. Implementing the same thing in C++ or Objective-C would be .... non-trivial. No bother with heap corruptions, etc.
The whole design of activities and intents is quite well thought out. It seemed overly complicated at first but now I appreciate it a lot more. It's also very flexible, you aren't forced to use the infrastructure if you don't want to.
Really rich APIs. Background services, maps, multimedia, power management, package management, notifications .... even a face recognizer!
The market. I see a lot of people rag on the market and the comments system. Maybe I'm biased because my app has almost universally good reviews, but it's really nice to get that instant feedback about how you're doing. It's my experience that G1 owners (and there are apparently quite a lot) are ridiculously lenient. My app is extremely simple and could use a lot of extra features, yet I consistently get really flattering comments about it. It's actually been a long time since I wrote and launched an app directly to Normal People, and it's been a refreshing experience. Publishing my app to the market was a breeze - it's instant gratification. No approval process.
... and the bad ...
All that said, I like writing apps for Android. Eclipse is decent. Java is decent. The distribution process is decent. And it's apparently improving pretty fast.
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
Java. OK, actually I hate Java.
So you hate Java despite it allowing you to do precisely, easily, and compactly what you wanted to do? *
People are weird.
* I'm guessing you had a traumatic experience with an applet in 1998 that took 20 seconds to start up, and hung your browser. Get over it.
Get your own free personal location tracker
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.