MOTODEV Blog

[#1]

If you develop software for mobile devices, should you consider spending time and energy developing apps and services for Android? Yes! When we took at hard look at the options for Motorola, we decided to put our bet on Android, and we've been developing Android apps and services like MOTOBLUR for well over a year now. We've gained a fair bit of experience working with Android, and we love it, so I'd like to share some of the reasons to consider building your apps and services on Android.

I'm on our software product management team, and my team plans the features that ship in the derivative platform releases that run on the CLIQ, DEXT, and our future Android-based products. We build quite a bit on top of the base Android releases, and we've been contributing many of the features we've developed back to Google and the OHA. In addition to sharing what we've added to the platform, I'd love to get your input on what more you'd like from the platform, or tools, or the ecosystem at large - we especially like building platform and tools features that developers will use to create great new apps.

Join me on this week's MOTODEV podcast with Randy Ksar as we take your feedback and have a good discussion on #motoandroid (Hashtag for this event).

Tune in on Wednesday September 23 at 9am PDT / 12pm EST

Listen to the live stream here:

Join the G-SNAP! chat, tweet your questions (hashtag #motoandroid), or call in to 347-826-9350 and ask your questions here:

Jason

P.S. I'll be at the MOTODEV Summit and look forward to meeting you there. 

Message Edited by jasonjwarren on 09-22-2009 03:33 PM

[#2]

Some kind of API for in-app purchases of add-on content would be nice to see. Officially supported multi-touch would be pretty great, too. I gotta believe someone at Android is working on it. One big idea I've been playing with is an API to sync app settings across multiple installations. The point where more Android users have more than one Android device will probably happen really soon, and syncing in the cloud would fit perfectly with the push abilities of phones.

[#3]

From the developer's point of view it would be nice to have more (profiling) tools that would provide an insight in the performance of Android apps as well as simulate various situations when there's less memory available (e.g. by setting memory available to the emulator and not an empty 96MB device and 16MB per-app heap memory space).

As far as the Android OS (or better said, underlying Linux OS) it would be great if a SPL (Second Program Loader) would be capable of using less system (RAM) memory and more memory available on SD card. Such low-level feature could permit that as Android OS memory footprint becomes bigger older devices would still be able to run newer version. In other words, as Android OS evolves the market size of supported device would not shrink

Cheers!

Shonzilla

[#4]

@andrex

In-app purchase is possible today on CLIQ and DEXT, using third party payment services, or even using Google Checkout, but this isn't quite as friendly as it would be if there were an API integrated with the Android Marketplace. Since Android Market is closed source, this is something Google would need to add. We're also looking forward to the Marketplace adding this interface, and thanks for the suggestion.

Multitouch is something everyone is looking at, and this is one of those areas where patent portfolios and cross-licensing agreements come in to play. We all want to ship great multitouch asap, and ideally as part of base Android. We'll have more to talk about here in the future.

No one here at Moto, where we sell handsets, would argue against folks buying multiple devices :-)   If you have any specific settings that aren't currently exposed (possibly through permissions) that you think would be valuable to be able to replicate, let us know.

@ shonzilla

That's a great suggestion about emulating specific memory scenarios. We have a solution for this, and Edwin Bisek will be talking more about this at the MOTODEV Summit. 

I *think* you're asking about either adding the ability to install apps to /SD, or maybe the upgrade scenario where a latest/greatest Android OS upgrade requires more room than is available on the local memory. I hear you loud and clear on the install-to-SD scenario, and both Moto and Google have investigated this. It's coming ... but not immediately.

j

[#5]

hi, wow terrific idea !!!!

[#6]

Jason:

will you please provide me with a link to App Accelerator program terms? I do not seem to find them anywhere on the website. 

[#7]

hey Yuri. Thanks for your question.  The terms and conditions can be found in the process of applying to the program. If you have a specific question let us know.