Glaring Mistake

You know its not often that you spot a mistake in a Google dev blog post, in this particular one the add-proguard-release.xml file does not add the 3rd party library jars in the libs folder to the libbraryjarspath refid. Its bug report 11413 and here is my corrected file.

I just updated part of AndCooperANT to have the correct file and should have a release of AndCooperANT finished shortly.

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Google’s September Surprise

Google published updates to android tools and the adt. Android Tools r7 has updates to Library Projects to use aidl files and some improvements in ant build targets. ADT improvements including the ability to have the src folder be renamed something else in Library projects and some new resource qualifiers.

Caution: Google is warning that the ADT 9.8 plugin should only be used in Eclipse 3.5 and not eclipse 3.6 at the moment.

To get both updates start up your android avd manager in your Eclipse IDE or from the command line and download the android tools update first.

UI Patterns in Android

I have started to upload my code samples detailing UI patterns in Android at github. As this progresses during the next 12 days I should have up some more notes posted in addition to the javadocs from the code sources.

Want to get rid of the title bar flash that is somewhat freaking frustrating? Look at the AndCustomTitle project as there is a solution.

Obfuscating from Eclipse

WARNING this is not for the faint-of-heart! It will break upon SDK revisions! Because it might result in more work for  GoogleOHA Engineers they might discourage it! WARNING, THIS ONLY WORKS WITH ECLIPSE! If you look at the SetUP Ant task code you will find that it checks for an sdk.ant.build.revision number with a max value of 3 set at this time. The value is stored in the sdk.properties file at the root of the platform version folder.

Now, here is the trick. Change the number to the max which is 3. DO NOT STOP YET AS YOU ARE NOT DONE. Copy the complete set of ant_rules_r2.xml, ant_libs_rules_r2.xml, etc and change the copy names to use r3.  Add the new obfuscate target making sure to add the other stuff such as Proguard config checking, etc. Now change that dex target by setting depends to include the obfuscate target you added after the compile target in that depends line.

Now, fire up Eclipse and compile all you want knowing that its being obfuscated automatically. Neat huh? FINAL WARNING, I HAVE NOT TESTED THIS WITH ANDROID LIBRARY PROJECTS YET!

I found it as I was looking at ways to decrease the ANT build script code I was writing and I really did not want to re-invent what Google/OHA were already doing with anttasks and android development tools. Its not the tools folks, despite what Joe Hewitt claims. Its the knowledge of hacking up the tools to do what you want!

The Android Invasion

Google CEO announced in talks to the press that Android just reaqched the milestone of 200,000 activations per day

which surpasses the iphone daily activation rates bragged by Apple. But what does this mean?

Lets put this in perspective. That is 6 million devices per month or 18 million devices per quarter. Nokia is

currently at about 80 million devices per quarter.But market share wise Apple has about 300 to 400 million device customers while Nokia has about 1 billion device customers. The key will bethe Market changes that are happening now and in the 4th quarter of 2010 and the feature set of upcoming Android 3.0(Gingerbread).

Let me explain. To decrease someone’s market share the activiation rates have to at some point double per quarter.

Other-wise the increase is just eating away a few percentage points of the full number of devices in consumer hands.

Out another way if we reach 400,000 Android Device Activations daily activiations before Jan 1st 2011 that is enough

in one year to decarese Apple’s market share by half and Nokia’s by about 25%.

That is a strong confirmation that the often-strange way of having OHA partners work on a valued-closed-behind-the-scenes

next android release trunk source at break-neck speeds along with Google Engineers is working as an effective way to

put new features in hands of Hardware OEMs at a fast iterations required for the consumer smartphone sector.

But, this only half the story as both hardware OEMs and software OEMs(that are members of OHA) have also made some

critical iterations. We have improvements of the MediaCore(OpenCore) at a rapid pace. We also have at the same

time SoC OEMs who are members of OHA making it possible to obtain their low cost SoC solutions and build a

1 GHZ $100-priced android device. In the next 6 months you will see another iteration dropping that consumer

price to $50 for an Android 1 GHZ device.

Google CEO announced in talks to the press that Android just reaqched the milestone of 200,000 activations per day which surpasses the iphone daily activation rates bragged by Apple. But what does this mean?
Lets put this in perspective. That is 6 million devices per month or 18 million devices per quarter. Nokia iscurrently at about 80 million devices per quarter.
But market share wise Apple has about 300 to 400 million device customers while Nokia has about 1 billion devicecustomers. The key will bethe Market changes that are happening now and in the 4th quarter of 2010 and the feature set of upcoming Android 3.0(Gingerbread).
Let me explain. To decrease someone’s market share the activiation rates have to at some point double per quarter.Other-wise the increase is just eating away a few percentage points of the full number of devices in consumer hands.Out another way if we reach 400,000 Android Device Activations daily activiations before Jan 1st 2011 that is enoughin one year to decarese Apple’s market share by half and Nokia’s by about 25%.
That is a strong confirmation that the often-strange way of having OHA partners work on a valued-closed-behind-the-scenesnext android release trunk source at break-neck speeds along with Google Engineers is working as an effective way toput new features in hands of Hardware OEMs at a fast iterations required for the consumer smartphone sector. But, this only half the story as both hardware OEMs and software OEMs(that are members of OHA) have also made somecritical iterations. We have improvements of the MediaCore(OpenCore) at a rapid pace. We also have at the sametime SoC OEMs who are members of OHA making it possible to obtain their low cost SoC solutions and build a1 GHZ $100-priced android device. In the next 6 months you will see another iteration dropping that consumerprice to $50 for an Android 1 GHZ device.

Useful Tools

Good morning and welcome to the beginning of the Android ‘Land-grab’. Some useful tools:

1. OpenNCF has published their sdk for andorid and an android add on at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-nfc/files/

2. The AppInventor site went live:

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

Its a visual programming tool to develop android applications.

3. OpenFrameworks has released an android version for NDK development:

http://www.openframeworks.cc/setup/android-eclipse

4. Mark Murphy has released an Android Jar library tool called AndParcel that makes it easier for Androdi Jar Library deployment for those who do not use the Eclipse IDE and Gogle ADT combination at:

http://andparcel.com/

Android Code Samples Complaint

Like I never complain, right? While I appreciate the hard work every Android OS contributor has put in thus far some of the android code samples leave a lot to be desired. Code style mess-ups like if statements without brackets, parameters not finalized, etc. Still using the old test sub-folder in project instead of separate test project way of testing.

I can understand if we are not using modern IDEs.  But are we not using Eclipse, IDEA, NetBeans, etc? Well did we not have time considering that these code samples are supposed to show correct coding techniques?

Guess how long it took to clean up the LunarLander code project using properly set tools to get it to actually run on a device and emulator? Now, I have not completed the text code project yet but it was only one hour.

Yes, I am putting some  at github in the month of July. We have to have more professional code samples. The code samples in the SDK are just as important as the outstanding behind the scenes UI work that is occurring for Android 3.0 release in October.

Android 2.2 SDK

The Android 2.2 Sdk release is probably on Wed morning. But, this sdk release is different.

Not only do we have a quarter where android device sales surpassed iphone(remember I told you it was going to happen in 2010 not 2011), we also have an Android SDK that represents both Google and OHA taking outside suggestions and incorporating that into the SDK. Such improvements as a Dalvik Just-In-time(JIT) unit and being able to store applications on a SD-card.

60,000 vs 90,000

Tim Bray  in his first Advocate post stated a daily sales figure of 60,000 versus iPhone’s daily 90,000 unit sales figure. Now, remember Apple has had 3 years to get to that 90,000 units per day figure.  But, Android has reached 60,000 per day figure in less than 2 years. See why Apple is is scared yet?

A large part of that has been due the hard work of Verizon and Motorola. We as Nadrid Developers shoudl be prepared when it becomes 90,000 Android Devices sold per day later this year.

Droid shattered the iPhone 74 day records

Everyone is reading the Nexus One news wrong, not surprising is it? Fact, Flurry through their tracking has deduced that Droid sales reached 1.045 Million over 74 days which broke the original iPhone record of 1 million unit sin 74 days set in 2007.

The difference between Droid and Nexus One is the carriers for the most part and we should see an up swing in Nexus One sales once the release of Nexus One on Verizon happens. My prediction is in the 74 days of Nexus One being available for Verizon sales will be 500,000 units in  those 74 days.