Google's Android Cellphone SDK Released 283
AchiIIe writes "The android SDK has been released to the wild. As expected it features the Linux Kernel, low level libraries such as FreeType, OpenGL, SQL Lite, WebKit (as a web browser), a custom Java Bytecode interpreter that is highly specialized for the CPU. A common java API is provided. A video has been posted with an the overview of the API." SM: Several readers have also written to mention the Android Developer Challenge offering $10 million in prizes for cool mobile apps.
Re:Hardware? (Score:5, Interesting)
Android for Kaiser = drool. Even Android for Hermes would rock.
Android will start the Java tornado on devices (Score:4, Interesting)
Being a developer of an open source java database [db4o.com] myself, I am absolutely thrilled.
This is the the single best possibe thing that could have happened for the success of Java on devices. This SDK will be decisive for how software will be written for the masses in the future: With Java. Don't forget: The number of mobile phone users without a PC will soon be an order of magnitude higher than the number of PC users.
Independent developers discussion forum (Score:3, Interesting)
Terr'rists, Italians and Quebecers not allowed. (Score:5, Interesting)
"The Android Developer Challenge is open to individuals, teams of individuals, and business entities. While we seek to make the Challenge open worldwide, we cannot open the Challenge to residents of Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma) because of U.S. laws. In addition, the Challenge is not open to residents of Italy or Quebec because of local restrictions."
Mama Mia! Tabernak!
Here is an idea for Google (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, your phone is your true home assisitant.
Re:Hardware? (Score:3, Interesting)
"a custom Java Bytecode interpreter that is highly specialized for the CPU" - Kind of hard to do that in an emulator on a PC. What CPU is this optimized for? (Guessing ARM... Still, to evaluate performance you need real hardware.)
The "custom Java Bytecode interpreter" probably means a Jazelle JVM [arm.com] or variant. These are specialized CPU/JVM combinations that execute Java bytecode in hardware. This technology is used on many of the Java phones already in the market.
-Will [ohadev.com]So... Java... standard APIs... WebKit... (Score:4, Interesting)
That would mean that you could code for the gPhone and deploy on the iPhone (or even iPod Touch), either by loading the runtime onto the iPhone first (cf. "Cedega"), or by bundling a stripped-down runtime into the iPhone version of the app (cf. "Cider").
That'd rock. That'd rock hard. I'd become an Android developer if things work out that way.
Re:Hardware? (Score:3, Interesting)
I kind of doubt the Jazelle thing, though, since Warren East at ARM was talking smack about Android [wired.com], and they are the ones that do Jazelle...
OMG! Sergei Brin's Outfit! Long Slv T-shirts FTW! (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out the video of Sergei! He's the CEO of the company, worth billions of dollars, making an official product promotional video and he's wearing a shirt that looks like he slept in it! If you can be a billionaire wearing shirts that you slept in I don't even know why I even bother wearing a collar at all
Re:worth a try.. (Score:2, Interesting)
(2) You need a bit of patience to learn eclipse. Don't try to learn it without reading the tutorial. Once you get over the learning curve you probaly will like it.
(3) Yeah, that annoys me too, but only minor annoyance.
Re:Here is an idea for Google (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Random? (Score:5, Interesting)
-metric
Re:How will Google make money on this? (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, if your search history included something like "taco bell nutrition information," and you were walking past a Taco Bell, I'm sure Pepsi Co would gladly pay Google some cash to have your phone pop up the message "try our new Grande Chuldita Supreme! Just across the street and to the right! Stop by in the next 10 minutes and receive 50 cents off!"
Re:Java means (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Java means (Score:5, Interesting)
PalmOS primarily ran on low power devices, and you pretty much needed to "hit the metal" if you wanted to get any sort of performance from your apps. It's something I used to do a great deal in the past, but not for many years.
However, we're talking about much more powerful devices here. Even the most basic smart phone packs quite a bit of processing power these days, and much of the core functionality is provided at a hardware level, so the level of abstraction provided by a driver model is absolutely essential. If you go low level, then your application isn't able to take advantage of the additional power offered by some devices but not others. You end up coding to the lowest common feature-set.
Making use of the APIs which provide interoperability and a standardised framework is the only way to ensure that your software will run on all Android devices, something which from a business point of view is essential.
For what it's worth, I was always a big fan of Palm's work back in the day, but they really haven't moved with the times, and I genuinely can't see them surviving for long now that Google have put together what, certainly at first inspection, appears to be a very fine, well thought out, free mobile platform and application stack, especially as they are also providing all of the necessary tools and support for free.
I know I'll certainly be putting in the time to fully learn the APIs and try and come up with novel commercial ideas for a chance to get hold of some of the $10M cash their putting up to get as many people involved as possible. I suspect many others will be doing the same.
With a company the size of Google behind the software, and interest from plenty of big players on the hardware front, coupled with sensible Open Source choices when it comes to the main platform components, I can't see it being anything other than a success.
Whilst it's currently being marketed as a smart phone platform, Android easily has the potential to spur on the creation the sort of non-mobile convergence devices that we've been expecting for years, but which have failed to materialise. If you look at the functionality provided by the platform, it's more than capable of providing all of most people's day to day requirements of a full PC, and not just a mobile device. If you ignore gaming, which has always been the driving force behind the push for faster hardware, then most users only require a small fraction of the processing power available in their desktop PC, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if within the year we didn't have full desktop oriented devices based around Android on the market.
As you can probably tell, I think Google have done pretty much everything right as far as Android is concerned, and I'm very excited about it. I fully expect the smart money and development talent to be behind them, if not from the very start, then very soon.
Re:Ooops (Score:1, Interesting)
And seriously, go away. You sound like the kind of developer that would allow buffer overflow exploits and such for the sake of raw speed. And then open source your nigh impossible to compile code, expecting others to fix it.
Video, audio, and decompression belongs in supplied libraries anyways.