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Ten Features To Love About Android 1.5
An anonymous reader writes "Last month, Google officially announced the Android 1.5 update, dubbed 'cupcake.' The new software is apparently ready to roll out to Android-powered devices beginning tomorrow. Make no mistake, Android 1.5 is a major upgrade — they could have called it 2.0. The software brings a host of new capabilities, some of which can't be found on rival mobile platforms, including video recording and sharing."
I find it difficult to program for the Android platform, but only because it's a *very* different programming paradigm. Rather than a single entry point, as with a standard computer program, there are half a dozen entry points. This isn't really a bad thing - having a single entry point would just mean you'd have to figure out which task needs to be done at the beginning of the program.
In other words, the OS does the hard part for you.
You might hate that style of programming, but it doesn't make it bad - and it certainly doesn't mean there are a million things to hate about the Android platform.
(There may, in fact, actually be a million things to hate about Android. I don't have an Android-based device, so I wouldn't know; I've only fiddled with the emulator in the SDK. My point is simply that the programming paradigm needed to write software for the Android platform isn't one of the things you should be hating.)
Funny you mention that -- Android includes an embedded OpenGL implementation.
I upgraded from a first-gen iPhone to an Android dev unit, and am generally quite pleased. It's unfortunate that support for the Bluetooth RFCOMM profile isn't exposed to application level yet -- but one of the things about Android is that it's reasonably straightforward to build a custom version of the firmware with the "hidden" flag turned off for those classes; on the iPhone, I'd just be waiting for 3.0, and then hoping they wouldn't require any device I want to make a serial connection to from my phone to be licensed as an iPhone accessory.
Except the iPhone is the same price or cheaper than other similar phones. Every carrier charges the same for data
Really? I paid $179.00 for my G1, and my unlimited data plan is $24.95. So I don't know where you're getting your pricing information.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The G-1 has all the "killer apps" I need at the moment - Accuweather, Google Maps with GPS, an IP Cam viewer so I can monitor my security cams at home and at my datacenter, SSH client, voice recorder, handy tools like data conversions, a level, a ruler and of course the Magic 8-ball. The browser works for the kind of things I need every day - my MRTG graphs, logging into my switches, routers, and remote-reboot controllers. It doesn't do SlashDot for shit though...someone needs to work on that.
Seriously, anyone judging a smart phone based solely on the camera, eye-candy, and "gaming experience" is probably 12 years old. Mine is a tool to help me earn a living first, and a toy second.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
parent is false....
Only Webkit, and its direct connectors run native, the wrapper around the browser runs in the DVM.
This is more due to Webkit itself not based on Java, and allows for performance.
most other apps, including the dialer do NOT use native code.
Of course, some libraries use native Code too (like the DB, etc) but you have access to the same libraries via the same API.
Have a nice day!
Why do you need an addon?
Firefox:
1. Triple click to highlight.
2. Drag to empty area of tab bar.