THE AMAZON/? ANDROID ECO-SYSTEM
[This post builds on an exchange with Tom Riley on twitter] I’ve seen and heard a few reports about Samsung producing an Android tablet for Amazon, and, while I’ve been told things which would appear to make that very difficult for Samsung specifically, an Amazon backed Android tablet is something that I’ve seen as a distinct possibility for a while (which is why I suggested it in my talk at DroidCon London last year).
ANDROID 'PHONES.... THE NEXT GENERATION?
I rarely do hardware reviews because I know most people have their own personal tastes, and not everyone will agree with what I find appealing in a device, but every now and again something comes along which I feel is a real game changer and worth mentioning, and after a few days with my latest purchase I’m beginning to think it’s a game changer. I’ve had a few Android ‘phones and they’ve all been an evolution of the earlier devices; slightly higher clock speed, more RAM, more onboard flash, but, in my view, there’s never been anything that compares to going from a single core ‘phone to a dual core phone (in my case the Optimus 2X from LG).
(PARTIAL) ANDROID HONEYCOMB SOURCE DROP?
After checking over the Android Open Source Project repository I noticed an interesting comment in the manifests project; which made me wonder if some of the Honeycomb source code had been dropped into the AOSP repository, and, well, it looks like it may have done. [Update : Jean-Baptiste Queru from Google has confirmed there is some Honeycomb goodness in the AOSP repo which comes from the AOSP repos master branch. It’s not the “full” honeycomb, but a snapshot of master that can be used for recreating a Honeycomb build to test any future incompatibilities against]
WHY I APPLIED FOR A JOB AT GOOGLE
Background [You can skip this if you’re not interested in the history of Google and me] My first exposure to Android was at the Google developer day in London in September 2008. Dan Morrill gave an introduction to Android talk, some concerns were raised about application trust, I offered a cryptographic signing solution, he asked for my business card, and I didn’t hear much after that. I wasn’t too concerned because Android was a hot thing, and Google later hired Reto Meier as the android developer advocate in London, and given that Reto wrote one of the first truly useful Android developer guides I could see why he would be a natural choice, so I thought nothing more of it, and started hacking away at some Android projects including AndAppStore.
[OPINION] GOOGLE HIRING ANDROID DEVELOPERS AND THE ANDROID ECOSYSTEM
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a story about Google planning to hire Android application developers which, to me, seems to have the potential to be the worst possible thing they could do to the Android eco-system. I’m going to outline the reasons why I hold this view but I’m always open to other, well reasoned, points of view. The reasons I currently have this view are as follows;
- It does nothing to help non-Google developers who are currently struggling to make a living from developing Android applications.
THE ANDROID HONEYCOMB EMULATOR
Some people have noticed some niggles with the Android Honeycomb Previewemulator, so I’ve put together a few tips which may help improve your experience. I’ll do my best to keep this updated with tips and post hints on my twitter account as I get them. Things you can do something about Emulated memory size By default the Honeycomb AVD is created to emulate 256MB of RAM, my advice is to increase this significantly.
AMAZONS APPS STORE
(This was prompted by a question asked by Reto Meier) As many of you may know my company built and later sold AndAppStore over the course of two years. During that time we kept an eye on the competition and received feedback from users and developers and got a good idea of what both sides wanted. I commented on Google Market because it was the main distribution channel for developers, but I rarely commented on competitors alternative app stores because each of them has their own business plan and all of the legally operating ones seemed to be doing their best to strike a balance between what they need to survive and what users and developers want.
MULTI-CORE ANDROID 101
Some of you may already be familiar with multi-core programming, so a lot of what I’m going to cover will be very familiar to you, but some Android developers may have never written for (or considered) how the multiple CPU cores available on CPUs such as Nvidias Tegra 2 chips (as rumoured to be in the Motorola Honeycomb Tablet) can improve the speed of their applications if the applications are written in a multi-core friendly manner.
ANDAPPSTORE SOLD TO THE SEAVUS GROUP
I’m personally thrilled to announce that my company, Funky Android Ltd., has sold AndAppStore to the Seavus Group. As part of a refocusing process, Funky Android Ltd. had been looking to sell AndAppStore, and, when approached by a representative of Seavus, they felt Seavus could provide AndAppStore with the resources it needed to grow the store faster and larger than Funky Android could realistically achieve. Everyone at Funky Android has found working with developers and users via AndAppStore thoroughly rewarding, and we will continue to be involved with it as and when Seavus ask us to.
ANDROID TABLET & PHONE UIS IN ONE APK [HOW TO]
(the code and application links are at the bottom of the article for those who are a bit impatient) At DroidCon UK this year I presented a talk on why Android developers should be thinking about tablets and I touched upon creating UIs which can adapt to the device they’re on. Anyone who attended DroidCon UK has now had plenty of time to get a head start so I’m now going to show one method of getting an Android application to adapt itself to present an appropriate UI.