Oh, Android – How do I love thee? Let me count the ways; I love that you’ve essentially eliminated the need to hypothesize what might be coming in future firmware updates as, due to your open source nature, it’s put out there for all to see. I love that.. well, there are other reasons, but none relevant to this post. No offense, Android.
In the recently published roadmap for the work-in-progress “Cupcake” Android development branch, a laundry list of bugs fixes and coming features is on display.
The big things on the feature front:
- Browser: Copy/Paste, (Hold the shift key, highlight the text with a drag or the trackball, release shift. Ta-da!), inline search (Find text on the page you’re looking at), support for the ultra hasty SquirrelFish javascript engine
- Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) profile support, Bluetooth Remote Control (AVRCP) support
- “Basic x86 support” – this is a bit ambiguous, but it implies that Android will be able to run (natively) to some extent on the processors used by most modern computers. While that theoretically opens the door to Android netbooks, it’s not clear what all this entails
- “Input method framework, for soft keyboards and other on-screen input methods” with the ability for third parties to make their own onscreen keyboards.
- Perhaps most notably (Hell, I’d do a drumroll if the title hadn’t already spoiled it): Video recording.
Stereo bluetooth, onscreen keyboards, video recording.. that covers a huge chunk of the gripes people have with the platform. No word yet on how (one big update? lots of little ones?) or when all of this will be rolled out (we’ll go ahead and assume the ETA is “When it’s done”), but it’s good to know whats on the way.
They also detail bug fixes across the board, from the depths of the framework to the camera and the music player. If you want to give the list a glance to see if your (least) favorite bug is getting nixed, you can check it out in full here.
Yes, if “Cupcake” Android development branch really fix the bugs, it’s a good news.
Very Thanks you http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
I am surprised nothing was mentioned about FLASH support.
,Michael Martin
http://www.googleandblog.com/
You’re right, that is weird. Might just be that, as they’re working with Adobe for that, development is going on in a private branch.
Gawd!!! I hope android makes its way into the top spot in this next revolution. Developing in Java is so much nicer than Objective-C
Can any experience Android developers here comment on how mature the platform is? How painful is it to write and debug apps? Google got some criticism early on for changing around APIs and making life difficult, but I seem to hear less of that now.
It’s fairly straightforward. I’ve mostly only developed around the provided APIs, but for the most part, they’re straightforward and do about what you’d expect.
The SDK itself is something of a marvel, as it provides an Eclipse plugin to interface with a Virtual Android phone (meaning, Build + Run your Java apps actually launches in a (mostly) feature complete phone on your screen.)
I haven’t gone that deep into it yet, so I may not be the best commenter, but my initial (approximately 4 weeks in) impressions are positive. Also, bear in mind, I wasn’t there for the early API switcheroo, so YMMV.
In my experience (me and my two friends contribution digginmobile.com, made it to the second round of ADC) Android is great to work with. I work daily with JavaME and in my opinion Android is a lot more fun to work with.
Even a year ago the SDK was good enough and since then things have improved. You have a nice API, a good app life cycle and the way you work with resources is also nice.
There is still room for improvement but I believe that Android is good enough and will stay long enough to make it worth having a go at.
I, too, am curious about what “basic x86 support” includes, and how long until we see Android netbooks…
On a similar note, T-Mobile announced that they will be removing their $18 upgrade fee; this includes for those who are still patiently waiting to upgrade their phone to the G1 with Android.
That is just great for all of us who ALREADY PAID IT. T-Mobile says it’s just another way they are showing how much they appreciate their existing customers.. You would assume this means they will credit my account, but they are refusing, even though I ended up paying nearly $30 more in the end for my G1 as an existing customer, than all new contracts paid…
Yes Tmob.. You obviously really care about your existing customers.. @$$whipes..
Android will be on every phone in a couple of years. Java developers rejoice!
Just show me a damn decent phone! Nobody wants your crappy apps, show me a beautiful hardware!
CES is in a couple weeks, my fingers are crossed.
I hope they accomplish these things early in 2009 and I hope 2009 will be Androids year. Now if we could only get the OHA to start producing better looking phones.
when they say video recording ? Will they make it possible to record a video call? This is for when someone sends a video call and midway I (or they) wanna record what stuff is going on.
Also if some cool stuff is happening live, I’d want to call someone easily and show them what’s going on while continuing to video and record it (minimal or no interruption of video).
This is probably not an OS problem but Exchange (and hence corporate) support on Android is also really really bad!
To me as a software engineer, basic x86 support strongly hints to building the foundations for Google’s Native Client run-time environment which allows you to run confined x86 machine code on the client.
For me it means Intel dumping Maemo and joining Google on the TabletPC/UMPC/KeyboarlessNetBook or whatever the name they have today for simple computers. For me, the next step is PowerPC support and an Android versión of the Homebrew Channel for the Wii :-D
BlackBerry had this 3+ years ago
I am also surprise because there is no flash :O. Strange
Also Bluetooth Wireless Keyboards are not possible with the new Cupcake.
Seee them here: http://www.mymobilegear.com/AndroidKBDriver.php