I was woundering if theres any way to program an android smartphone to work with users like windows works, when each user has it's own desktop meaning it's own apps and it's own configurations?
any help would be good for me i'm kind of lost here
Multiple User support was unofficially added in 4.1, and was made public and enabled on tablets in 4.2.
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I've never made an app before and am looking to get into it. I also need to upgrade my phone because it's really old. I've heard people say that it is best to test your app on stock android. But I really wanted to buy a Huawei, which might be running an older version of android not stock. What extra benefit would I get by spending the extra $500 to buy a Google Pixel phone for testing. Or is it fine, if I go ahead and test my app on a Huawei? What would be the pros and cons?
Android is an open-source operating system, which means companies can modify it to their liking. They do so by adding what’s known as a custom skin or user interface on top of the OS, which changes its look and feel as well as adds new features. These skins include Samsung Experience, HTC Sense, EMUI (Huawei), and OxygenOS (OnePlus), to name a few.
Some skins, like Huawei’s EMUI, change the overall Android experience quite a bit. For example, until EMUI 5.0 came along, owners of Huawei smartphones didn’t have an app drawer. All the apps installed on a device were placed on the home screen, just like on iPhones.
With stock Android, you get none of that — you only get the features developed by Google.
You can see the comparison of "Stock OS" and "Forked OS" here
https://www.androidauthority.com/what-is-stock-android-845627/
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-stock-android/
With stock android, you get updates a little faster than other OS.
Coming to your scenario, you can even test an Android App without a physical device and by using Android's Emulator(Virtual Device) which has an Android Stock OS. You can select any version of Android(latest to old) and test your app there. If you are looking only for the purpose of testing I would not recommend you to buy PIXEL you can go ahead with your instincts.
People say it is best to test your app on stock android because the functionality you implement in pure android must work in the other OS as it is a layer on top of the stock OS but there are some chances(very few & negligible) that the functionality you implement in other OS might not work in stock OS. You can always use an Emulator for testing.
I am an Android developer. In my 5 years experience, I used both pixel and Oneplus, I did not find any advantages for stock android over Oneplus's Oxygen Os.
I like to have single android app in our managed devices, we want only that app to be used on the device with necessary restriction, such that,
Single use - Device will have only one app, user can't use other apps, like browsing, youtube or anything,
the initial setting like notification sound, GPS always on, notification and ring sound maximum level can't be modified.
user can not power off the device.
this setting can only be changed by our servers.
i think i have 2 option,
1) Using samsung knox sdk on samsung devices,
Here's MDM proving feature of Samsung Knox Standard!
2) General Android way, Set up Single-Purpose Devices, COSU solution
Android Developer's site.
Wanted to know your's view on this, may be if you guys have done any of the two or any other ways, i could use some of the guidelines or a path.
Thanks for reading, and please comment if i was unable to articulate the subject or it needs editing.
You can use Google's new Android Management API, it seems to suit your needs.
It is a new cloud API that allows to manage Android devices from a server, without having to build an on-device agent (a device policy controller).
I have broad experience of using Samsung Kiosk Mode from Knox Standard SDK which is free and Pro-Kiosk mode from Knox Customization SDK (which has more functions but is not free).
So I can tell you for sure that all 4 points that you have mentioned can be achieved by using Knox Standard SDK.
Singe Purpose: https://seap.samsung.com/api-references/android-standard/reference/android/app/enterprise/kioskmode/KioskMode.html
LocationPolicy (you can turn on GPS and restrict changing): https://seap.samsung.com/api-references/android-standard/reference/android/app/enterprise/LocationPolicy.html
Yes. It is possible but I forgot the exact implementation.
Yes, as well.
Only downside of using this SDK is:
You are tied to Samsung (which I personally okay with, since Samsung has such market penetration and you could get service almost anywhere in the world and in enterprise world it is critical)
About Android native functionality: never tried it
Update March 7, 2019: Now I am playing around Device Owner, we use it for Kiosk mode, works well and works on android Device with Nougat and earlier.
My company makes a tablet Android app to control an industrial process. We had been using a Galaxy Tab 10.1, but as that's no longer available in the US we're evaluating the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, running 4.03. We ship the tablet pre-installed with our app, and the app is carefully tested with the version of Android software running on the tablet.
As I was setting up one of the new tablets the setup wizard put up a message saying "You agree that your tablet may receive and install updates from Google" It wasn't asking me, it was telling me; there was no place to say "no" or disagree. Auto update is DISabled in settings.
How can I programmatically prevent a force-feed update to the tablet? Our users are connected to a local area net because the tablets are used to control other industrial products, but there is never any need to connect to the web beyond the factory walls, but we have no way to enforce that on our customers. The risk is that Google could force a change onto the tablet that might break our app.
Thanks in advance.
How can I programmatically prevent a force-feed update to the tablet?
Build your own firmware and use that rather than the stock firmware.
The risk is that Google could force a change onto the tablet that might break our app.
The risk of blocking the firmware updates is that Samsung (not Google) could deliver an update to the tablet that fixes flaws in the firmware that your customers would appreciate (e.g., better WiFi connectivity).
Please understand that the devices that you are using are consumer devices. Such devices are not intended for use "to control an industrial process". The expectation is that if you are using Android in such settings, that you would source your own device and have control over your firmware. Alas, there is not a whole lot of support for that at the moment, something I blogged about recently.
As long as you target your desired API, an update to the system should not break any functionality of your app. To answer your question, you cannot programatically disable automatic updates, it is a user function.
Check this link as well: Programatically enable/disable market auto-update
My boss recently gave me an HTC Wildfire phone for doing an Android version of one of our mobile apps, which is all fine and good, except that the app requires API level 8 (ie Android 2.2), and the phone itself only has Android 2.1 installed. After much googling, I discovered that this phone does support Android 2.2, and carriers will be rolling out updates over the air for this model phone "in the near future".
Since I'm not entirely certain what our lazy carrier's definition of "near future" is, it would be nice if I could download images for particular releases and install them on my phone. Coming from the world of the iPhone, it seems that this should be something rather necessary in order to successfully develop an Android app.
Yet, it doesn't seem that Google offers any Android OS updates themselves. Have I no choice but to wait for the carrier to release an update?
Edit: Thanks for the suggestions regarding the emulator, but I'm asking about testing on hardware only. I already have a working 2.2 emulator image, but I need to test on hardware now, since the emulator does a very poor job of things like video playback and audio processing.
There's a few ways you can test your application on Android 2.2:
1) You can use the Emulator provided by Google in the SDK. It is possible to create a virtual machine of any version of Android with various hardware options. However, the emulator does have some limitations such as not supporting certain hardware options (such as bluetooth) and it's also dreadfully slow to boot.
2) If you have to use an actual phone with 2.2, you can root your phone and flash a custom ROM. I'm not particularly familiar with how to root the Wildfire, or what custom ROMs are available for that specific phone, but Cyanogen Mod has pretty good ROM support for HTC phones, as well as an active forum with tutorials.
No, it's not possible to download images before OTA. You could check CyanogemMod from time to time - they're working on Wildfire support. Also you could use an emulator.
If you are wanting to bounce around with newer versions, I recommend the Nexus One as a dev phone if you can get your hands on one. Or, if you can deal with the constraints, start with a built-in AVD emulator with API 8 until your phone gets the OTA update.
The Motorola Droid is also getting/has 2.2 on it. At least in the States, in seems that most of the phones on Verizon already have it (non-scientific, just from talking to people I know). So if that phone is available, it may be a decent choice.
we have an app for Android called OnTheRoad (market://search/?q=pname:eu.inmite.prj.otr.aclient ), but for certain reason, it is not visible if I access Android Market from Vodafone 845 phone (Huawei Joy).
The phone has QVGA screen resolution and runs Android 2.1 system. The app is 1.5+ compatible and has enabled support for small screens in its manifest. Another our app has completely same settings and it is perfectly visible in the Market from VF845.
Is there any way, how can I check, based on what criteria is my app filtered for certain phone model? Thanks.
The answer you're looking for is available on Google's developer site, here.
This is a huge issue with "Copy protected" applications. You should use market licensing instead although it is a pain to test and implement. Are your apps copy protected because im guessing this is the issue. Hope it helps.