A latest SDK now allows developers to create and run virtual devices with tablet-size screen. Just create a new device and set the size to 1024×600 or bigger.
Developer Console now have a new “Feedback” link near all uploaded apps. It shows user comments (not working yet) and freeze/crash reports. Very cool! No need to explain to customers how to use SendLog.
Update: the link was removed, perhaps this feature will be announced at Google I/O later this month.
We’ve seen many upcoming Android tablets, but apps from the Market were never showcased. Some people tend to think that the apps will look bad in high resolution, so I’ve decided to check it. Below go the screenshots of apps running on Android 1.6 x86 in VirtualBox. Screen resolution was set to 1024×768.
An excerpt from Service API changes starting with Android 2.0 by Dianne Hackborn / Android Developers Blog. Learn how to manage background services and make your phone faster:
Our final issue to address is the case where there are simply too many service running in the amount of memory available on a device. This may be due to bugs or design flaws in installed applications, or the user simply trying to do too much. Historically users have had no visibility into what is going on at this level in the system, but it has become important to expose this, at least for lower-end devices, as the use of services has had an increasing impact on the user experience.
To help address this, Android 2.0 introduces a new “Running Services” activity available from the Application system settings. The main content is a list of all running services that may be of interest to the user, organized by the processes they run in. In the example here, we see three services:
- GTalkService is part of the standard Google application suit; it is running in Google’s “gapps” process, which currently consumes 6.8MB. It has been started for 3 hours 55 minutes, which on this device is the time from when it was first booted.
- ActivityService is part of the Phonebook app, and its process consumes 4MB. This also has been running since boot.
- SoftKeyboard is a third party input method. It has been running since I switched to it, about 4 minutes ago.
The user can tap on any of these services to control it; for normal services that are running because they were explicitly started, this will present a dialog allowing the user to explicitly stop it.
Some other services, like the input method, are running for other reasons. For these, tapping on the service will go to the corresponding UI to manage it (in this case the system’s input settings).
Finally, along the bottom of the screen are some obscure numbers. If you know how to interpret them, this gives you a lot of information on the memory status of your device:
- Avail: 38MB+114MB in 25 says that the device has 38MB of completely free (or likely used for unrequired caches) memory, and has another 114MB of available memory in 25 background processes it can kill at any time.
- Other: 32MB in 3 says that the device has 32MB of unavailable memory in 3 unkillable processes (that is, processes that are currently considered to be foreground and must be kept running)
For most users, this new user interface should be a much more effective way to manage the background applications on their device than the existing “task killer” applications. In the vast majority of cases the reason for a slow running device is too many services trying to run. This prevents the system from being able to run any background processes (which speed up app switching), and ultimately can result in thrashing through the services when not even they can all be kept running. The Running Services UI is intended to provide very specific information about the services that are running, to help make a good decision about what should be stopped. It also does not use the API to force stop an application, which can unintentionally break applications in numerous ways.
If you are interested in writing Android apps, this tutorial is a great place to start:
http://www.vogella.de/articles/Android/article.html
More detailed guide about installing ADB/USB drivers in Windows:
http://theunlockr.com/2009/10/06/how-to-set-up-adb-usb-drivers-for-android-devices/
On Mac, just add path to the SDK to file .bash_profile in your home folder. If you don’t have Path Finder or other file manager that shows hidden files, here is a small guide:
Sony Ericsson is planning to open Android Store soon and developers can already submit programs for review. But looks like it’s not that easy.
App submission is a six(!) step process. On the first screen you need to enter category, app name and description. After this things are getting worse:
Sony Ericsson released add-on for the Android SDK that includes the Android 1.6 system image with small customizations:
No custom X10 media app inside, just skinned Android 1.6. This add-on is only useful for developers who might want to test how their app runs on this phone.
Installation:
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