Android. News and Tips

Skype has released a Lite version of their software for the Android Market that is now available for download. For those not familiar with Skype, it is software that uses your internet connection to make phone calls, messaging, file transfers and video conferencing. In 2005, Skype had nearly 75 million user accounts, was purchased by EBay and has since increased to an estimated 370 million users.

While Skype is most commonly known and used as personal computer software, it is quickly becoming a mobile staple as it works for over 100 Java enabled phones. Much to the dismay of mobile carriers of course, as users are avoiding using their minutes by taking advantage of WiFi and 3G Data Connections for voice conversations.

Obviously, Skype Lite for Android doesn’t have all the features that full blown Skype does, but here is what it does include according to the Skype Lite for Android Press Release:

• Make Skype-to-Skype calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world
• Send/receive instant messages to/from individuals or groups
• Make Skype calls at low rates to people on landline or mobile phones
• Receive calls to your online personal phone number on Skype
• See when your Skype contacts are online/available to chat

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Today brings a bit of good news for those writing apps for Android.  DeviceAnywhere now allows developers the capability of testing and monitoring applications for the G1 from anywhere in the world.  Using their online service, developers are now able to interact with a virtual G1 just like they would if they had a real one.

Options like interacting with the touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, camera, and more are at developers disposal.  The G1 is just the latest in the ever growing line of handsets available through DeviceAnywhere.  In fact, according to them, they now have over 1,500 handsets to choose from.

We have always been supportive of the wireless industry’s move towards open source. We are pleased to offer our developer community a convenient and cost-effective way to develop content and applications for the Android G1 through our T-Mobile Virtual Developer Lab program. - Faraz Syed, CEO of DeviceAnywhere

DeviceAnywhere works by having real handsets connected to live cellular networks which are accessed over the Internet.  Developers are able to interact in real time to make sure that everything works in real life scenarios as opposed to just using an emulator and blind faith.

If you are interested in signing up, head over to DeviceAnywhere.com and grab your first three hours of service!

This post marks the start of a new era in the Phandroid kingdom - Weekly Apps in Review (WAR). Instead of waking up each morning and sorting through the “All Applications” button sorted by “Date” in the Market (read: Every morning of the past month for yours truly), we at Phandroid are starting a WAR post. No, this doesn’t mean the usual iPhone fanboys vs. Android fanboys in the comments, it means… WAR. So let’s get started!

(This first week will be semi-incomplete but as WAR continues in the following weeks a more detailed post will be published. We will only make posts about notable and/or popular apps, and will order them from oldest to newest)

1. Bookmark 2 - This app allows users to select a preexisting bookmark, which then loads the selected booksmarks page. From there the user is can then choose any picture or part of a web page to use for the bookmark’s icon. It allows for adjustable size of the selection to enable the user to custom-fit the icon they’d like for the app. Very useful for online apps that are used a lot such as Meebo, Google Reader, etc…
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Android is ringing in the new year in style.  A few of the guys who run VentureBeat also spend time with a startup called Mobile-Facts and are into some pretty cool stuff. How cool?  Well, let’s just say they took our favorite platform and got it running on an Asus EEEPC 1000H netbook.  That cool.

VentureBeat says that an Android-based netbook could be done is as little as 3 months, but that it may be closer to a year before we see market conditions favor large scale netbook adoption.  The most exciting part about this is that this hack was done in about 4 hours.  Asus is one of the companies who just recently joined the Open Handset Alliance. Is it a reach to think that they may be already working on a line of Android netbooks?

Take a quick look at some other names in the Open Handset Alliance - Intel, Wind River, and Toshiba.  All three could put out an Android Mobile Internet Device (MID) or netbook-esque device with 4G capabilities  and run them on the new Clear network with blazing fast speeds.  Boy, this sure could get fun!

Garmin has released the first images of the long awaited Nuvifone user interface.  We don’t have to tell you guys, but it looks a lot like the iPhone and Android screens.  Look at how clean and clutter free everything looks, from call screens to camera mode and of course the GPS stuff.  We’re really looking forward to the true turn-by-turn navigation!

The interface looks an awful lot like a Garmin GPS unit that just happens to also have phone features.  We wonder if their Android-based phone will be similar in form or if it will look like a phone that has perfect GPS features?

Here’s a pair of videos to check out.  Although they are nearly a year old now, they’re probably new to a lot of you guys.  The first is called “Intro Video” and the second is “Scenario Video.”
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HTC looks like they’ll not be manufacturing Sony Ericssons’ Xperia X2, the much touted successor of the Xperia X1.  Sony was reported to be having few quality issues with the device.

According to the sources, Sony is rumored to be preferring smaller brands over the bigger brands for its X2 which puts HTC and the other major players out of the equation. Sony is said to have approached FIH (Fixconn International Holdings) and Pegatron, a subsidiary manufacturing unit of Asus, which is a competitor of HTC back home.

The real reason behind HTC being shunned is still not clear. So, can we expect Sony’s Android powered device to be manufactured by HTC. That is to be seen! The X2 is due to hit the market by the end of year 2009

I don’t know whether anyone remembers much of 2007 or will remember things to come from 2009. But, 2008 would quite inadvertently go down in to the memory drain of mankind as one of the most happening years in our history. 2008 saw the dawn of many things. It’s been a rocking year as far as technology is concerned and a rocking year for the economy. We saw interest rate cuts, budget cuts, and GDP growth rate cuts for every single country on our planet.

As bad as the economy was, so at its best was the technology that emerged in 2008. We saw few of the most memorable releases that will play a major role in the coming years. Well, quite naturally the best thing that happened was the release of Android, Google’s foray in to the mobile industry with its open source operating system. Whenever a giant like Google sets its foot in to such a demanding area as is the mobile industry, we expect something magnanimous and Google never disappoints its supporters. The very first day Android was announced it created ripples in the mobile industry.  Ripples which have slowly transformed into waves hitting the other players so hard that they were practically magnetized into becoming open source.

We saw the competition grow to new heights with the entire industry embracing the developer and user-centric attitude. According to their recent research report, Gartner said that Symbian still commands 49.8 percent of the global mobile OS market and was pretty skeptical in its reports over Android. The very fact that, Android is being mooted in just less than a year of its release shows its on to something real serious in terms of apps and the user experience.

The stand out players of this year have been Apple, Google and HTC. Apple overcame its own sales record by recording a massive 327.5% YoY growth in its iPhone sales. Google completed their first decade and released its own browser, Chrome.  And then there was Android, of course.  HTC has surely established its brand the world over by releasing the first device to run Android along with a slew of niche hand sets.

Microsoft and Moto were largely taking too much on to them this year. After the release of Android and even Symbian being evangelized to become an open source OS, Microsoft found itself to be short on fuel, resulting in a sling-a campaign. Moto though was on the economic side of the year, with it being nailed down with a massive loss that it would soon like to forget.  We, being the sunny-side type, are expecting a breath-taking design from Moto in 2009, with their take on Android.

So, as 2009 is upon us, everyone from a tech geek to a bearish-economist is expecting the best of the year 2009.

Wishing all the AndroidGuys fans (that includes me) a bullish year 2009.

In an email circulated to registered members of the Android Market, details of future Android Market updates are revealed along with their deployment schedule which is due to start in the 1st quarter of 2009.

Google’s Eric Chu confirms in the email that the paid applications rollout will take place in stages. First starting with the US and Europe in early 2009 followed by further expansion into Europe later in the year.

Other Android Market features will include the ability for developers to target their applications for specific regions.

In mid-January, we will update the Android Market publisher website to enable
country targeting. Please start thinking about which countries you want to
target and begin preparing your products accordingly (e.g.,
localization). Note that your apps will not become available in these new
countries unless you specifically select them in the publisher website,
after we update it.

Additionally, I would like to confirm that Android Market will support
priced applications starting early Q1 2009, as we’d originally stated last
fall. Given the country-by-country work required to set up payment support
for developers in different countries, we will enable priced app support
in Q1 for developers operating in these countries in the following order:
(1) United States and UK; (2) Germany, Austria and Netherlands; (3)
France, Italy and Spain. By the end of Q1 2009, we will announce support
for developers operating in additional countries.
 

Just in case you’re interested, I’ve pasted the full content of the email below:

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Current G1 owners are licking their chops at the prospect of getting some much desired updates to their Android phones.  Features like video recording, stereo Bluetooth, and an on-screen keyboard are the only things missing from an otherwise robust OS.  But will the G1 ever see the icing from cupcake’s features?  Ask around and you’re likely to get varying answers.

Here’s what we’ve pieced together so far.

Cupcake is a different version, or image of Android.  Carriers and handset makers are free to take whatever is available from Android and bend it to their liking.  If the hardware you have doesn’t support stereo Bluetooth, then obviously the device won’t either.  No software is going to override the hardware and get it to do something it can’t.

The image of Android that was used for the G1 was built by Google, HTC, and T-Mobile.  The updates for Android, including the cupcake stuff, don’t need to involve HTC or T-Mobile.  Developers from all over are chipping in to make Android a more full software platform.
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If you’re like me, you do your Android development outside Eclipse and therefore rely upon the full range of the Android toolkit, from activitycreator through DDMS. And, if you’re like me, you just plopped a 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex”) on a multi-core PC for development work.

Which means, if you’re like me, you ran into a problem trying to get DDMS to run.

DDMS appears to be written using the Eclipse’s SWT GUI toolkit. The version of the SWT that ships with Android 1.0r2 is written for a 32-bit Java runtime. If you try running it on a 64-bit Java VM, you get a nasty error like “wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: architecture word width mismatch)” coming out of one of the RCP libraries (tools/lib/libswt-pi-gtk-3236.so).

I am sure there are any number of elegant ways to get around this that allow DDMS to run as 32-bit Java while the rest of your environment is 64-bit Java. However, I couldn’t find any. So, here’s a brute-force way to do it.
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