A logic game like ours shouldn’t take much space.

I like your suggestion.
thanks,
george

Why not design a game platform that end users download as an app, then design games that are stored on the removable memory? (akin to the NES and SNES emulators?)

i’m no designer, i just want cool games to play on long flights. this seems like an elemental solution to me – the first person to design a “Droidtendo” app can then license it out to other game designers.

Great idea! How about we create a MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) app which references your roms from remote storage. You could have over 5,000 coin op arcade, sega and NES games at your disposal. If we ever catch up on to-do’s, we will do that for you Jon.

Just give us a bunch of nes roms and we’re good to go!

unlimited data may be the case in the US (for now)…but it isn’t the norm worldwide. People writing apps assuming unlimited data are immediately limiting their market.

iPhone / iPod Touch don’t have one. Apple doesn’t want any way for data to get in or out other than via iTunes.

Do I PLAY them?

I tried…..but I never last more than 15 minutes. It’s just too hard on the wee screen with the pinch/spread controls…….

Much easier to play the same games on PC..and more fun, too.

But I did buy them…and doesn’t the App Store look successful!

There certainly will be games that wrok well on the small format….but they will also tend to be smaller games, easier to play on the smaller format.

But who cares about multitasking on a google phone, theres not enough storage space to save multiple apps, you have to uninstall an old app to load a new one!

Thank you very much, but I’ll stick with my 16GB of app storage space.

But, seriously, how many apps do you want to run at one time on a phone? The screen is so small you can only see on app at a time anyways. So I have my email open and want to view a webpage, so I hit the home button then hit the safari icon. I then surf the web. I find an article I want to email to someone so I then cut and paste it out then hit the home button and then hit the email icon, I’m now in my email app so I then paste the article into a new email and send it. How is that process any better on a “multitasking” android phone?

Isn’t that how maps works?

> I think I [know] what they are thinking though: Running apps in Java
> gives them an extra layer of security and safety. And eventually,
> they want everything to be server side anyway so apps as we
> currently think of them will eventually be going away.

Exactly, tho I sympathize with anyone who wants to provide snappy game-performance on a typical Android handset.

I think the bigger picture is this: We’re still looking at an OS in its infancy, running on handsets from makers which are both new to that OS and – until very recently – more than a little antsy about throwing big R&D bucks at it. The homely G1 is the living embodiment of this shaky partnership. But, once a million of ‘em were sold, attitudes shifted…on both sides. Now, we’re on the cusp of a period where Android phones are like city buses. If you don’t like the current ‘hot’ model, just wait a few minutes for the next one.

Much the same thing is true of Android, itself, with a remarkable _three_, significant updates in the first year, alone. My money says Google and their corporate partners are already re-thinking the internal storage vs SD storage issues. I just hope they can all agree that its time to bust a move – aggressive improvements, with an eye toward anticipating the market’s future needs and leaping ahead of the competition – rather than remaining cautious and being satisfied with something like keeping pace.

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, I’ll be listening to Pandora while I update some apps and simultaneously browse the morning’s email.

Face it, iPhone fans: If Apple said all Macs were changing to a ’singletask’ OS – sure, you have to restart all 3rd-party apps whenever you switch between them, but hey…no latency, kids! – you’d march on Cupertino with pitchforks & pine-tar torches.

If you’ve ever played a 3D game on an iPhone/iPodTouch, you know that they are already pushing the envelope of what a Mobile phone can deal with in the first place. Take that in force it to run inside of the virtual machine… Does that really seem like a good idea?

I really think Google needs to put more thought into this as far as games are concerned.

I think I what they are thinking though: Running apps in Java gives them an extra layer of security and safety. And eventually, they want everything to be server side anyway so apps as we currently think of them will eventually be going away.

But, this isn’t a very workable plan for games. I really like Android a lot. I really want to be able to make games for it but Java games have never been very good and Java games running on a mobile… I just don’t know guys. I can write an app that is the game engine with an “Installer” part that stores the game assets on the SD card. That’s not a problem. And, I don’t think poping out the SD card is an issue either as most of the newest phones need to have the back cover removed just to get at the thing. What is a problem is getting that data to run a speeds that would allow a 3D game to be considered fun to play.

Again Google can definitely help by at least giving some free server space so smaller developers who want to make large apps can use this method too.

The apps to SD is more of a technical limitation (again as pointed out, how do you handle the situation where users remove the SD card). Developers can work around the issue by downloading data (for example music, texture files) onto the SD card when loading an app. The app will still be installed on the phone, but all the other resources besides from the executable is on the SD card; this works around the removal issue because you only have data on the SD card and no important executable files. This is what Google officially recommends.

Of course it would be ideal for Google to provide better support for this. First is having free server space for developers to store app data files. Second is adding support for downloading of data files onto the SD card during installation and also handling error conditions, for example removal of the SD card.

As for a general comment on the piece, I think it was a conscious decision by Google to let app space be so small. Remember, Android is supposed to reach all types of phones. Not every phone will be a high spec phone where a couple GB of memory is no problem. Most phones will have only a couple hundred mb to keep costs/size down. In the end, I don’t think the issue is unsolvable without apps to SD; Google just needs better support for having app data on the SD card.

Is the author proposing that Android allow apps to be stored on external memory cards? Not at all, the author in fact supports this as “an understandable move due to potential data corruption during an unexpected card removal”

From his statement “more internal storage is definitely in order if Android can’t support external storage” he proposes that an increase in internal memory is well in order. However, this would be a phone manufacturer’s issue, not Android’s. The more storage they put into their phones the more storage Android has to store their apps on.

Why is the author’s appeal on Android’s part then?