IPHONE TESTING WRAP-UP
As you’ve probably guessed, I’m impressed with the iPhone. Given the tests I’ve been doing over the last week I can see why it is an aspirational device. Apps have a consistent feel and are wide ranging, the device is easily portable, it has a pretty decent camera, and it just comes together in a pretty simple to use package. I’m also pleasantly surprised by Lumia. It falls short in terms of the variety of apps available, but Windows Phone 7 is only a year or so away from it’s public launch, so that’s to be expected.
I/O 2012
I’d be interested to hear peoples thoughts on going to IO next year. Last year was the first year I went and, although it was a fantastic experience, I’m in two minds about going this year. Basically my thinking is; Sessions; Useful but streamed so I could see them anyway People; Largely thought provoking, but I could meet most of them at more local events. Giveaways; They have monetary value, but aren’t enough of a reason for me to go (I hardly use the giveaways from IO2011).
A MESSAGE FOR ANDROID OEMS
I know some of the people who follow me work for companies who make/brand/sell Android devices, so I’m going to put this out there and hope it’s useful to them. There are a number of developers (me included) who see the Nexus One as the pinnacle of current Android devices. It’s size, solid construction, and reliability made it a device we could carry knowing that it’d work when we need it.
SOME TIPS ABOUT THE ICS EMULATOR
Some tips about the ICS emulator; Don’t expect it to run well on any machine with less than 3GB of RAM. It can be done, but don’t rely on it :). There is a list of know issues in the emulator at http://tools.android.com/knownissues (from @ediTLJ on twitter) Increase the default RAM for your AVDs to 1024MB (yup, 1GB) If the emulator has crashed try deleting the AVD you used.
WHY I USED "BLOCK" ON GOOGLE+ TODAY FOR THE FIRST TIME...
We all know social networking is only as useful as the people you socialise with. We all know that every now and again you’ll come across someone either on the Internet or in real life whose behaviour makes you want to steer clear of them. Fortunately most social network owners also know this and so they provide facilities to stop those people becoming a serious problem to you. And today I had the first situation where I felt it made sense to use that feature on Google+.
NOKIA/MICROSOFT WINPHONE7 DEVELOPER EVENT
Yesterday I went to the Microsoft/Nokia Windows Phone 7 development event so I could get a feel for the platform from a developer perspective, and I came away a lot less positive about WinPhone 7. There were two speakers who presented the 4 or 5 sessions, neither was from Microsoft or Nokia, and both made glaring mistakes, one to the extent they had to start a session by apologising for what they’d said in a previous session because it was wrong (it was about how WinPhone7 manages application instances to service requests to start the same application from different live tiles, so it wasn’t exactly an obscure feature).
ANDROID ICE CREAM SANDWICH
Given the announcement due tomorrow I think we’re going to be looking at consumers being able to get their hands on an Ice Cream Sandwich device before developers have had a good chance to play with an SDK, which, just like the last time this happened, is pretty disappointing. There isn’t really anyone who wins from this because it creates a situation where consumers get their new shiny ‘phone only to find out that all the latest features are only supported by a few apps which are either preloaded (in the case of the G-apps), or they come across in Market by chance and are from a select few privileged developers.
ANDROID DEVELOPER LAB SUMMARY
Great Android Developer Lab in London, Good to talk to Richard Hyndman Nick Butcher and Sparky Rhode . Main tips from the day; Fragments are the future. If you’re writing new code use Fragments. If you don’t you’re doing it wrong. Avoid showAsAction=“always”, Ice Cream Sandwich ‘phones can have small screens and so could be limited on space for options. Most of the best apps come from teams with Developers and Designers on them.
WHY I'M INTERESTED IN THE AMAZONS TABLET
I’m interested in seeing how well the Fire sells because to me it seems a good test of which consumers value more; Content or technology. The device itself is technically not stunning; It seems to be roughly equivalent to last years Galaxy Tab 7 with 8GB of storage and missing a few features (e.g. a camera). It’s also not running Honeycomb, so it doesn’t really have the geek-chic appeal of the more recent Android tablets.
HTTP MULTIPART ON ANDROID
After seeing a twitter post asking about HTTP MultiPart on Android which linked to a Google Groups thread which recommended a solution which required the inclusion of multiple libraries, I thought it might be worth sharing a method I’ve used in the past which can be used reasonably easily and doesn’t require tens of kilobytes of unused library functions to be added to your app. First off you’ll need the AOSP source which can be obtained from an unofficial mirror in the absence of the primary official repository at kernel.