I have been developing for Android for a while now and recently got interested in developing for kindle devices as well. I am not completely sure how to go about this but what I would really like to know is if it is possible to build an app targeting Kindle that will also run on all Android devices?
While the look and feel of the Kindle Fire tablet appears distinctly different from other mobile operating systems, it is actually Android in disguise. In fact, it is very compatible for existing Android applications, which is customized to remove native access to the Google app ecosystem.
The first gen Kindle Fire device is based on Android Gingerbread (API level 10), the second gen Kindle Fire devices are based on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (API level 15) and the third gen Kindle Fire devices are based on Android Jelly Bean (API level 17). See Device and Feauture Specifications at the Amazon Developer website.
For developers, this implies that building applications targeting Amazon’s Kindle Fire is similar to building an Android application. In fact, per Amazon, most of the Android applications (76% of the applications they tested) can work on Kindle Fire without needing any change or development effort.
Changes will be required when it comes to In-App-Purchase and Push Notification (Amazon provides a proprietary API for these services, Push is supported for Kindle Fire 2nd gen or newer). So eventually you might want to maintain at least two APK builds, one for Google Play and one for Amazon.
For complete steps see - setting-up-your-development-environment.
The two big differences I've noticed between developing for standard Android devices and the Kindle Fire:
Push messaging - Normal Android uses GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) which requires that Google Play be installed on the device, while Amazon devices use ADM (Amazon Device Messaging) which require that the ADM library be present. ADM will not work on the 1st generation Kindle Fire.
In-app purchasing - This one is pretty obvious. Android uses Google Play, while Amazon uses the Amazon App Store. Both use their own SDK for in-app purchasing, their own URIs for links to products, etc.
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I have an android app with Google-analytics integrated. Recently, i ported it for Blackberry10 devices and is currently there on both Playstore and Blackberry world. Now, how do i know from the analytics reports about the blackberry devices running my app. In the analytics report,for devices it shows a row in devices an "Not Set". I did not make any changes for porting my app to blackberry except the mandatory changes in the manifest.
Can anyone please give some suggestions.
The following would allow you to verify inside your app to see whether it's a BlackBerry or another Android device running your app (taken from BB Developer site):
java.lang.System.getProperty("os.name").equals("qnx")
Unfortunately I am not sure what properties Google Analytics uses for its device information.
How do I send and handle notifications from an Android app in the BlackBerry hub? I am using the Android runtime on BlackBerry 10. It does not work out of the box if I use Android notifications the regular way.
I was at the BlackBerry mini jam in Hamburg yesterday, November 27th, 2012. The marketing guy responsible for the Android runtime said there are definitely apps which are able to do this, however he could not provide me with details on how to do so.
If you have a dev alpha device try flashing it with beta 4 which includes support for C2DM (push notifications).
https://developer.blackberry.com/blackberry10devalphas/update
If using the simulator, just download the latest version of the simulator.
https://developer.blackberry.com/develop/simulator/index.html
According to RIM Support a working release of the Blackberry Hub should be included since BB 10 10.0.9.2264 (I am on 10.9.9.339 which might be the problem)
I have developed and published an Android application on the Android market. The phone I used for developing this is a Samsung Galaxy running Android 2.3.
On Google Play, it does not allow me to download the app to the above phone, saying that the phone is not eligible.
What could be the cause of this ? It gets downloaded to other devices, that even run Android 2.2 so it can't be an issue with the Manifest.
The manifest can define other limitations (other than min version). For example screen size, density, required hardware and more.
The developer can also define some filters in the developer console.
So probably one of those options are filtering out your device.
There shows an application development kit exists for Samsung smart TV. But my doubt is that will it support android applications. Does all the smart TV's are Google powered? will they all support android application.
Samsung's 2012 TV range will be running the Google TV software in some fashion (I'm not sure what fashion, but I believe it will sit alongside or on top of Samsung's existing system).
Google TV is Android powered.
You won't be able to take advantage of it if you want to support TVs released in 2011 or earlier.
On normal 2012 Samsung models you won't run Android app too.
Samsung and Google has signed agreement, but it will be only for one or two TV sets models as it is with Sony and LG.
So if you want to make applications for Samsung - forget about android apps, use HTML/JavaScript.
And I mentioned it already here https://stackoverflow.com/a/10881869/364483 - you can also make HTML/Javascript Apps for Google TV.
I think its time to ask this question since the kindle fire has been out a few days now.
I've been hovering around the net to see just how different android vs kindle fire development differed.
How different are the 2 in terms of developing apps?
Is it true that standard apps in the marketplace aren't available?
See Amazon's FAQ here: https://developer.amazon.com/help/faq.html#KindleFire
Over 75% of android apps will run fine on Kindle Fire as is. As for the apps that don't work, it's because they could be using Google APIs. These APIs have to be replaced with Amazon APIs.
In short, Amazon has tired their best to keep it as simple as possible for an android app developer to switch to Kindle app development.