Android SDK

General Discussions
#1

Who else has taken a look at this? What do you think about it?

Here’s what I gleaned from a quick runthrough.

  • Heavily Java-based but uses a mix of base language packages and custom ones for media and graphics.

  • Custom built virtual machine.

  • Comes with a nice device emulator.

  • Programming model is component based rather than monolithic.

  • OpenGL ES support (and other bells and whistles, if the phone allows)

  • Not finished but there’s already a sufficient amount to write something decent.

  • Big contest to write best apps - win up to $10 million.

  • Jon

#2

The first thing I noticed is that it’s not Java ME… check out that package list:
http://code.google.com/android/reference/packages.html

Lots of good stuff in there. I do Java ME stuff all the time, and (on first glance anyway) I’d love to switch to Android instead.

#3

so far I am digging it!
lovely to have access to some proper classes :slight_smile: - not sure if I like the totally new api tho.
If the emulator is even close to the final product, then I want one NOW.

I am a bit curious about the license and all. It only mentions Google, but the android.jar file contains apache, ibm, sun, bouncycastle and a lot of others.

#4

found a license file in android_sdk\tools\lib\images\NOTICE
seems to contain it all. it also has a kernel-qemu file, which suggests the use of emulation software by qemu.

#5

A genuinely exciting piece of mobile news!
I certainly wouldn’t bet against Google ;D

#6

I tried it and I love it. Now we have an open mobile OS which runs JAVA exclusively and provides low level access to all the phone features - i never thought that that would ever happen.

(Now I have a reason to buy a new phone next year :wink: )

#7

it is indeed a good thing having a whole OS exposed to Java like that.

Titan Attacks port on its way :slight_smile:

Cas :slight_smile:

#8

Looking at the Lander sample, it certainly seems easy to code for - and it’s all driven from Eclipse, too.

But, aside from the millions Google are throwing at us in the competition, I’m still skeptical there’s any money to be made - especially if content is channelled through the same dodgy bastards that handle j2me stuff (I mean aggregators and operators, plus all the pirates that sell on content to/via them).

Have Nokia and SE committed to using it? If so, where’s it going to sit alongside j2me, brew and flash lite?

#9

i’d love to see it supercede j2me - I can certainly see it being easy to migrate midp content over to - I bet we could have some of our existing content ported over within a few weeks.

One thing that the videos didn’t seem to cover was the issue of signing and security… hunting the sdk docs now.

#10

Their “Writing Efficient Android Code” documentation is slightly worrying.
It’s endorsing poor programming techniques which, when accompanied with a half decent bytecode optimiser such as proguard are perfectly fine and have zero runtime cost.

#11

[quote]Their “Writing Efficient Android Code” documentation is slightly worrying.
[/quote]
No kidding. It’s like, hello, the 90’s called, it wants its Java optimization back. What, is the Android VM interpreted or something? Are we talking about Nokia Series 30?

I’ve seen Java ME apps where the best optimization was just sticking a sleep() in the game loop. Running at 30 fps is a hell of a lot more efficient than running at 200+ fps.

#12

Since they’re trying to be platform-agnostic, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re using something like the squawk jvm. Much of it is implemented in Java, so the porting the small native core is easier, but performance suffers.

#13

Their “Writing Efficient Android Code” documentation is slightly worrying.

Can’t find it. It’s sorta ironic that search doesn’t work on that page.

Edit: http://code.google.com/android/toolbox/performance.html

#14

It looks really good BUT - how many hansets run Android now? How many handsets will be running it in a year’s time? 3 years?
I’m also a bit concerned about security - can someone write an ostensible game which GSMs all the (valuable) phone data back to their spam-generating server? J2ME isn’t perfect but people do trust it…
Also;

[quote=“CheekyRipley,post:8,topic:30907”]
I’m staying in the ‘wait and see’ camp.
Having said all that, a slice of that $10M would be nice…

#15

You guys should go over some youtube video’s. The part where steve balmer saids google stil lhas nothing and the part where they mentiond partners already aboard NTT DoCoMo, T-mobile

just use wikipedia:

[quote]On 5 November, 2007, the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of several companies which include Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, and NVIDIA, was unveiled with the goal to develop open standards for mobile devices.
[/quote]

for a early adopters list its certainly not mild I’d say

#16

Given that the Android platform is a direct competitor to Symbian I’d be surprised if Nokia were in Google’s camp… though maybe it’ll give Nokia the nudge it needs to realize their Symbian handsets really are unstable, and clunky.