[dundee] Android Adventures - and old machines!

[Lee Hughes]

I've been playing around with google android 1.5sdk .. very interesting.

I've been looking at a new phone, and however much I look at an i-phone,
I just can't get over it's a locked down piece of crap. Okay, it's slick, very slick,
but I want to write apps, they might not be very good, and just say 'hello world'..
but hey, there my apps, and I want to run them.!!! with out the overload apple saying what I can run and not run.

I was also looking at getting a separate gps device too, but android phones seem
to come with FULL gps, dunno how well it functions but this certianly looks like an interesting app 

http://www.andnav.org/

and at last, I can get away from google maps. (and get lost ;-) ). I like the idea
of making my own maps, all online maps seems to be very driver centric, i.e cars, if you on foot or bike, you feel a bit left out!

if you want to check android out (either in a vm, or proper hardware) I've
had some success with livedroid

http://groups.google.com/group/android-porting/browse_thread/thread/4a0cf72d2af842fa/3714e10cb449465e?lnk=raot

I've not worked out how to install new apps yet, I have to pretend the machine
has a sd card... documentation a bit thin on the ground at the moment.

One thing I was thinking about it is using android for older laptops and the like,
okay, puppy/dsl really do fill a gap, but android devices might be lots of fun too,
for older machines with limited ram (64mb), where X11 just wont fit.

it's been nice playing with the platform source too, it seems very complete, which is a refreshing change , most embedded stuff usually have a few vital files missing , preventing you from compiling/porting easily :-(.

Eclipse setup and install was fairly straight forward, and I was up and writing apps quickly. If you download from eclipse, make sure you just grab the java one, i had compilation trouble with the Enterprise java eclipse.

downside (or perhaps upside) , you can't use qt or gtk toolset, so no direct porting 
of linux giu apps. However I think there is movement on writing native C apps, however the are restirected to the console at the moment.

if you get a moment I suggest you have a play!!!! it's fun!

http://developer.android.com/




      
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