Android Development

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!

Hi Android programming folks,

Perhaps you already read this notification on the Android Blog about the Android Developer Labs World Tour. Google’s Android team will go on a trip and tour the world and host developing sessions in quite some cities all over the world. So if you are interested to get direct info from the Android team and your hands on new hardware (probably the Nexus One) just register at the end of this article.

Share your Developer Labs Tour with us!

If you are participating in one of these sessions would you mind taking one or two photos and share them with us? I am sure, that there are quite some developers out here who are not living in one of the mentioned cities and cannot go to such sessions. I will be attending one at least will share my shots with you guys. So if you would like to share yours as well, check out the following short instructions on how to let me know of your shots.

How to submit photos:

1. Upload your photos to flickr or Picasa.
2. Tag them with www.androiddevelopment.org

I will then put them up here on the blog so everyone can take a look how your session looked like!

Developer Labs World Tour Schedule

North America

• Austin, Texas – Feb 4
• Seattle, Washington – Feb 8
• Waterloo, Ontario, Canada – Feb 8
• Washington, D.C. – Feb 9
• Mountain View, California – Feb 10
• Cambridge, Massachusetts – Feb 11
• New York, New York – Feb 12

Europe

• London, UK – Feb 2
• Paris, France – Feb 8
• Berlin, Germany – Feb 10
• Zurich, Switzerland – Feb 13
• Madrid, Spain – Feb 13

Asia

• Singapore – Feb 28
• Taipei, Taiwan – March 3
• Hong Kong – March 4

Register for Developer Labs in your City!

Like mentioned before, I ordered a Nexus One. Just 5 days after ordering the phone, it arrived here (in Hong Kong). The phone’s box looks kind of like an Apple product box. Plain white, not much written on there and a bit stylish. However, it doesn’t reach the Apple “stylishness”.

It still looks nice and delivery via DHL was no problem at all. I could track the package since it started shipping from the US. Google Checkout showed that the package was sent out from “Google Phone Webstore” and then the DHL tracking stepped in and everything was easy going. Anyway, I hope the phone is charged soon so I can start playing around with it

Here are some unboxing photos in chronological order:

As you can see, the phone comes with:

• Battery
• US Power Cord
• Micro-USB cable
• Phone bag with little Android

From the last picture you can see that there are three little contacts. Though there is no docking station delivered with the device I guess this is for a future docking station (probably provided by HTC or other accessories manufacturers).

IMHO, this is quite chic. I have to say that I am kind of surprised by the design. While the OS itself is pretty much the same on all devices; we distinguish Android phones more by their design and usability. Respectively, reviews say that the phone feels very fast - faster than all other Android phones on the market. Well, the huge processor must be there for something. But despite that the Nexus One just looks cool. I think I have to get one for “testing purposes” … No seriously, this is one of the pretty phones I have seen so far. Not just Android phones, I am talking about all smartphones you can compare the Nexus with. Well, the iPhone still looks great and I am actually loving the design of the new BlackBerry Bold 9700 as well.

The best thing is that you can get it unlocked without any SIM card limitation for just US$529 directly from Google. That is exactly what the developer community needs. A quasi standard phone for cheap which can be used for developing anywhere. They tried that already with the G1 for Developers but that didn’t work that well. For example, I was not able to order one because they could not ship to my country or whatever. Anyway, the Nexus One seems to be great and it will kick off the Android developer community as we get a great phone for less money!

Technical Specs

Power and battery

• Removable 1400 mAH battery
• Charges at 480mA from USB, at 980mA from supplied charger
• Talk time: Up to 10 hours on 2G; Up to 7 hours on 3G
• Standby time: Up to 290 hours on 2G; Up to 250 hours on 3G
• Internet use: Up to 5 hours on 3G; Up to 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi
• Video playback: Up to 7 hours
• Audio playback: Up to 20 hours

Processor

• Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz

Operating system

• Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 (Eclair)

Capacity

• 512MB Flash
• 512MB RAM
• 4GB Micro SD Card (Expandable to 32 GB)

Location

• Assisted global positioning system (AGPS) receiver
• Cell tower and Wi-Fi positioning
• Digital compass
• Accelerometer

Size and weight

• Height: 119mm
• Width: 59.8mm
• Depth: 11.5mm
• Weight: 130 grams w/battery; 100g w/o battery

Display

• 3.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen WVGA AMOLED touchscreen
• 800 x 480 pixels
• 100,000:1 typical contrast ratio
• 1ms typical response rate

Camera & Flash

• 5 megapixels
• Autofocus from 6cm to infinity
• 2X digital zoom
• LED flash
• User can include location of photos from phone’s AGPS receiver
• Video captured at 720×480 pixels at 20 frames per second or higher, depending on lighting conditions

Cellular & Wireless

• UMTS Band 1/4/8 (2100/AWS/900)
• HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• HSUPA 2Mbps
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
• Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• A2DP stereo Bluetooth

While the technical specs are interesting but not that astonishing let’s take a closer look to the supported formats:

Image

• JPEG (encode and decode), GIF, PNG, BMP

Video

• H.263 (encode and decode) MPEG-4 SP (encode and decode) H.264 AVC (decode)

Audio encoders

• AMR-NB 4.75 to 12.2 kbps sampled @ 8kHz

Audio decoders

• AAC LC/LTP, HE-AACv1 (AAC+), HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+) Mono/Stereo standard bit rates up to 160 kbps and sampling rates from 8 to 48kHz, AMR-NB 4.75 to 12.2 kbps sampled @ 8kHz, AMR-WB 9 rates from 6.60 kbit/s to 23.85 kbit/s sampled @ 16kHz., MP3 Mono/Stereo 8-320Kbps constant (CBR) or variable bit-rate (VBR), MIDI SMF (Type 0 and 1), DLS Version 1 and 2, XMF/Mobile XMF, RTTTL/RTX, OTA, iMelody, Ogg Vorbis, WAVE (8-bit and 16-bit PCM)

Well, not much new in here too as those formats are supported by Android already. Still, I like the phone though. Well done Google!

More about the Google Nexus One:

• Nexus One Website
• Nexus One Tech Specs
• Nexus One 3D Tour
• Nexus One Order UNLOCKED

I just read that Google plans to sell its own Android phone in two versions:

1. Branded T-Mobile version with contract.
2. Unbranded version.

This brought up some memories on how BlackBerry devices are distributed. For those of you who don’t know: BlackBerry devices from Canada’s biggest and S&P 500’s fastest growing company Research In Motion are only available through Wireless Network Carriers; mostly branded. It is impossible to get such devices without branding (unless you are a BlackBerry Alliance partner and get an internal device for testing).

For Google it is a good move to have their device at network carrier’s shelfs because that is where customers get their phones mostly. I guess the mainstream user (not you and me) doesn’t really care much about what phone it is and who made. The phone user’s decision is usually based on

1. Good deal with the carrier.
2. Phone’s capabilities.
3. Phone’s look.
4. Phone’s reputation.

Obviously user’s of Apple’s iPhone have their preferences sorted differently. Well, the above sorting is mine, and I have to say: even though the iPhone looks cool and is supposed to be “hip”; and the Android phones are kind of geeky (from a technological point of view); I am still using a BlackBerry as my main device. In fact, as I am on the road right now, I am using two!

People now might say: “Why the f*** is that? You are running an Android blog man!” Well, I have to say: Android is not there where I would like to see it at - yet. I really like the Android approach of Android OS and I truly believe it will have a bright future for all of us, but there is still some way to go. The gap to Google’s competitors gets closer and closer but it is still there. Fortunately, our business is such a fast growing one that our world order could be upside down next year.

I am really excited about the mobile future; this includes but is not limited to Android. What devices are you using?

More about this on Two Google Phones Coming in January? (Reuters via internetnews.com)

The Android Market just took the leap and jumped above the count of 20,000 applications. While the iPhone’s iTunes App Store is still ahead with about 100,000 applications, I have to say respect guys!

Hammering out 20,000 applications in such a short time without the devices and market power (like Apple has for example) is not that easy. I know there are still a lot of ideas in your heads (as in mine) which just want to be brought to paper life. So get started! Open your Eclipse, hack some lines into it, press compile, test, sign and upload it to the Android Market. No matter if free or paid, every new app brings more variety, more diversity and more attraction to the Android Market, every Android phone and therefore it makes the whole platform more attractive to users all around the world.

Get more about this on internetnews.com

• Android 2.0.1, revision 1
• Android 1.6, revision 2
• SDK Tools, revision 4

These were updated today! Check out the official article at: Android SDK Updates

Well, in two words: you can’t!

Everyone knows that, but there is some sort of a workaround to fuzz. Get a Google Checkout Merchant account. Yes, Google Checkout only allows a couple of countries and if you don’t come from one of these you cannot get such an account.

Especially a lot of our developer buddies are not located in “the west” and come from “exotic” countries like the Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Belarus, Qatar, Brasil, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Argentina, and so on. You get the idea. I have read forum entries and blog articles of so many such great developers who have awesome apps but can’t get them sold on Android Market.

Here comes the trick: Fortunately, one of the supported countries is the United Kingdom. It is very easy to setup a Limited company in the U.K. as they have a very liberal law on this and every entity (individual or company) can incorporate a Limited company; no matter which nationality. There are lots of agents that provide an easy company setup (mostly even just online) which in the end they do online at the U.K. Companies House as well. A U.K. Limited company also allows to have the principal bank account in your local country. In that way you can withdraw the cash on your Google Checkout account to your local bank account (may be even through an intermediate bank).

All of this of course, costs quite some fees and needs time to be set up. However, it is better selling apps and get 80% out of it than not selling any and get 0%.

FYI: A U.K. Limited company setup might set you back US$1,000 in setup fees; a bank account setup may be US$250; yearly company maintenance costs might come up to US$500 per annum.

So find your agent now and get it going! It worked for me. In the meanwhile, learn more about How to earn money with your application through the Android Market.

P.S.: Let us know how you got it! Leave a comment.

The fact wrap-up of the brand new LG GW620 phone running Android:

• Keyboard: Qwerty
• Display: 3 inch Touchscreen (320 × 480 Pixel, 18 Bit)
• EDGE, UMTS, HSPA (7,2 / 2.0 MBit/s) and WLAN (802.11b/g)
• Quadband-GSM
• 5-Megapixel-Camera (Videos in 320 × 240 Pixel)
• Internal Memory: 166 MByte
• MicroSD-Slot (up to 32 GByte)
• Weight: 142 g
• Dimensions: 109 mm × 55 mm × 16 mm (2 mm thicker than Motorola Milestone)

… how gay is that?

Remember my previous article about the Motorola Droid? Well, back then I already thought that name was questionable as it comes around a bit cheesy - especially when the device is running Android on there. It is kind of like calling a BlackBerry weather app “BBWeather”. But “Milestone”? Come on Motorola … you are a US company and US companies usually put shit loads of money into branding and marketing of products. If feels like they are cutting costs and try to save money on that front. Then a clever manager dude came along and named the phone “Milestone” because it will be the next big milestone for Motorola to get back on the profit making track.

That might be understandable, but then that question comes up: Why do you use that name just for Germany? Because lots of Germans don’t speak that well? Indeed … we they even call a cell phone “Handy”. Back to our topic. “Milestone” is not such of a common name in Germany that people would recognize it better than “Droid”. Some naming decisions are really funny.

Perhaps some readers from Motorola can shed some light in here

Website: Motorola Milestone

P.S.: Sorry for the expression at the top. No offense my gay friends - I like you too. It is just not my thing