Folks, check out these new stats from Nielsen Wire!
It tells us, that 71% of all Android users want to have an Android phone as their next phone. Though the iPhone users are even more loyal, their 89% number is quite normal for Apple users in General. However, there is not just one phone with an Android OS – there are a lot by now! Therefore, it is hard for Google / Android to provide the very same user experience on every Android phone.
Well, I actually knew it from the beginning. Google just replaced the official Android developer phone G1 and Dev Phone 2 with their very own Nexus One. This is what Tim just posted:
We’ve always offered unlocked phones for direct sale to registered Android Developers. As of today, the Developer Phone is the Nexus One, at a price of $529. To see the details or order a phone, you need to sign in to your Android developer account and click on the “Development Phones” link.
The Nexus One is a far more advanced phone anyway and therefore, it more suitable for Android app development. I got mine quite a while back and then (unexpectedly) I got a second one at the Android Developer Labs 2010 HK. Anyway, if you are thinking about getting a real phone for app development, I can definitely recommend the Nexus One.
I am not a big fan of copy protection, DRM or anything that prevents the freedom me and how I handle products I bought in future. Is it an app I bought with the G1 and copying it onto my Nexus One, or an old LP that I want to use on my new LP player. Therefore, I am always kind of skeptical when it comes to copy-protection mechanisms. Of course, as a mobile application developer for about 6 years (that’s longer than people know the word iPhone) I have to admit that I thought about those kind of thing a bit in the past. However, IMHO my time is better invested in adding new features to apps, create new apps and hook up with all the users to figure out what the heck they actually want – rather than trying to punish them with copy-protection mechanisms that are just annoying.
With Google recent announcement of the License Server for Android I have to say, they put out a good piece for developers and for users. I haven’t used the License Server yet, but from what I read in the blog article and Android docs (see links below) it looks like a solid mechanism that allows developers some basic protection via verifying whether an app has been bought or not. And to be honest, that’s all you need!
Here is what it does:
Developers can now easily verify whether the current user (more specifically the current GMail account) purchased an app. Developers can implement such verification methods in a jiffy into their apps and after getting verification (or not) they can decide what to do after that. IMHO, this is a very open, very free approach to this delicate topic and I love it! Here is the official chart of how the procedure works:
License Server via Android Market
By leveraging the Android Market infrastructure this library actually puts more value to developers if they use the Android Market. Honestly, the Android Market could use a major round-up upgrade of features and usability. However, it works so far and it gets better. Step-by-step, but hey, it gets better!
My conclusion:
Well done Google. I like this approach and I will definitely use it in future apps as well as in exsiting apps. It’s time for an app update week!
Note: you might want to read the instructions of the author carefully, before putting this on your iPhone. However, the droids are conquering the world!
I am not really an open source developer, though I truly believe in that concept, I just don’t have enough spare time to put into it. Damn I don’t even have enough time to blog right here. Anyway, I was wondering if there are readers of you who develop Android application for the sole purpose of open source licensing. Apparently there are 357 open source projects for the Android platform existing by now. Most of them are not finished yet, but still, this is quite a number. I hope this number grows significantly this year. It will give the Android platform more exposure, more functionality and therefore, grow the platform to a level where it is widely accepted.
Are you an Open Source Developer? Leave a comment!
I just read that article Nexus One: Failure or a Late-Bloomer? I am bit confused by the article and wanted to share that. If I am wrong in any point, please feel free to correct me. The author says:
Slow and steady may work for the tortoise against the hare, but sluggish sales of Google’s Nexus One smartphone has the blogosphere calling its approach a failure.
First of all, the “blogosphere” (oh god, I hate this word!!!11!!!eleven!!!) does not care about sales. The real blogosphere one at least!
Secondly it is talking about:
it took Apple [...] 74 days sell one million units of the original iPhone back in 2007. [...] Google, meanwhile, has sold only about 135,000 Nexus One units, according to Flurry.
I don’t know where Flurry has their numbers from, but when I went to the Android Developer Labs 2010 two weeks ago, the official Google/Android representative was saying during their presentation that they are currently shipping 60,000 phones a day! I call that a success.
Today we had the last even of the Android Developer Labs ADL 2010 in Hong Kong – hosted by Google for free! I attended and I was more than surprised about how many Android developers and interested people actually showed up. Traditionally, the development community in Hong Kong is very small. Check out a part of the long registration line here:
And that’s actually after half of the participants already checked in. The venue was considerably crowded and I would say nearly 80% of the available seats were taken.
Below at the left side you can see a banner of the Hong Kong Google Technology User Group. Seems to sound like a nice idea, if you want to know about that, check it out here: Hongkong GTUG
As I didn’t follow previous ADL events I didn’t know that every registered participant gets a free Nexus One. To my surprise, Google had a big box with loads of N1 devices and I got another one – for free! Check out the developers lining up for the free Nexus One:
Below you can see all these dudes with white Nexus One boxes.
Nice event Google! The best step is definitely to give developers free phones. You can have the best simulator / emulator, but it is always a different experience when you run your application on a real phone. This is very important proper mobile application development. You need to use your application on a real phone – only then you figure out what you actually did wrong. Google definitely understood this. Thanks Google.
It is done. Google Earth for Android has been published. I just ran it on my Nexus One and it seems to work fine. Very smoothly, nice 3D graphics and all the layers in there with your favorite restaurants. Zooming in and out as well as panning in the 3D world works totally fine. Besides that it is not doing much, but it shows your current location on the earth, of course. Still, well done Google!
Though the Nexus One does not seem to be a best-seller, it seems it found its way into Linus Torvalds’ hands. You know, the “Finnish software engineer [who is] best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel and git revision control system” (Quote from wikipedia).
I already wrote some stuff about the Nexus One and even about unboxing my device. Now Linus has one too and guess what he wants to use it for? He didn’t get it for the phone function or messaging because that would be too distracting during work. Well, he is right. It seems his favorite is “Google Navigation”; perhaps I should check that out too, some day?
I just read that article on the Android Developers Blog about Live Wallpapers.
The interesting fact in there – which many people might not know – are the possibilities what we developers can do with such live wallpapers. Just imagine you have a massive screen in the background of the phone desktop where you can do pretty much everything with. Kind of like a separate application, but the user will always see it behind his normal icons.
It is a very neat concept which you won’t find on the iPhone (afaik, you might want to correct me if I am wrong). Developers like you and me could show most recent stock info on there (check out Google Finance APIs), a list of the latest Google News or something else. You are only limited by your own imagination here. So hack attack and get freakin’ going!
