I am currently looking into porting some of my Android Live Wallpapers to Blackberry. Is this possible?
I can't seem to find any info about whether or not Blackberry devices support Nartive Android Live Wallpapers.
On initial release RIM stated that Live Wallpaper would not be supported, and I haven't seen anything to the contrary. Other features available on an actual Android device such as Java Native Interface are also unlikely to ever be supported. Remember that the BlackBerry Android run time environment is meant to allow Android Java applications to run. You might think of the BlackBerry run time as providing a Dalvik VM (though I don't think that is technically accurate). Each Android application runs in its own copy of the run-time environment. It does not provide the entire Android OS as a guest OS like VMWare, VirtualBox or QEMU would.
I don't believe that it will ever support Android Live Wallpapers. Every ported Android app runs in special runtime isolated from rest of BB OS.
On my opinion Android ports are just temporary solution that RIM chosen to bridge the gap when not enough native apps.
Cascades/QML is awesome framework so I'm almost sure that Android apps will be very quickly replaced with native equivalents.
Related
I need to make a 3D animation across the web, android and iOS platforms. My question is, is it possible to use WebGL to make the animations in native android and iOS apps? As I would write the animation once and it would in theory port to the android and iOS with out any problems or am I going to have to simply use the OpenGL ES to make the animations for the mobile devices and webGL for the web.
Disclaimer: I work for ludei
So, that's exactly what a company called ludei is preparing to launch ;)
We have it working on Android 2.3 (even on a Nexus One!) through 4.2, and iOS 4 (I think?) and up. We don't rely on the system browsers or webviews, so there are no "private libraries" problems, and we support versions of Android that can't have WebGL otherwise.
We're giving it the final touches now, but we should be able to release it in a few weeks :)
Check out http://impactjs.com/ for iOS they are allowing you to use threeJS //asmallgame.com/labsopen/webgl_impact/ right now for Android it is only supported on Chrome Beta and you have to enable the flag http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/01/25/google-finally-makes-it-easy-to-enable-webgl-support-in-latest-chrome-for-android-beta/ I would expect webGL to be fully supported with key lime pie version of android coming out soon. Also you can hack the iAd platform to support it on iOS but you will not get it through the app store due to using private libraries. github.com/benvanik/WebGLBrowser also be aware of github.com/kripken/emscripten because firefox recently came out with asmJS on odin monkey techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/firefox-nightly-now-includes-odinmonkey-brings-javascript-performance-closer-to-running-at-native-speeds/ this enabled firefox to port over unreal engine to webgl in only a few days at the last GDC so hopefully chrome and other browser start supporting asmJS for the obvious speed boost. techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/mozilla-and-epic-games-bring-unreal-engine-3-to-the-web-no-plugin-needed/
WebGL is not fully supported on all browsers, however both Android and iOS have native OpenGL views that can be used (and will provide a much faster experience than WebGL). Once your environments are set up for each platform, using the same code will be mostly trivial.
Although cocos2d-x does not support 3D animations, its documentation may help you get started for cross-platform apps using openGL.
I have a fairly large windows mobile app (written in NETCF 3.5). Those in power at my company are wanting to convert this app to run on Android.
What similarities are there between Android development and Windows Mobile (not Windows Phone) development? Specifically:
Window Forms (ie the UI)
P-invokes (my app has a lot of these)
WCF/SOAP web services support
C# and Visual Studio Development tools
Also, if you feel inclined, I would like a general statement on how a conversion would be from someone who has done it. (Keep in mind that I have never made an Android app.)
Background:
Someone (a non-programmer) here did a Google search and found a "tool" that converts Windows Mobile apps to Android for you (push of the button kind of thing). That person now has everyone believing that this conversion will take no time at all.
As a developer that has worked on several platforms, I just find that really hard to believe (though I would be happy to be wrong).
check out Will Google Android ever support .NET? as it might be what you're looking for. Not sure how well it works, but if the non-programmer is willing to front the money, I say give it a try
Update:
Looks like mono switched companies:
http://xamarin.com/monoforandroid
The short answer in NONE. Android is running Linux that is restricted to Java applications. If you want to port an application from .net to Android, you are looking at a total rewrite.
Sam
There is the monodroid project, which takes .NET applications and makes them run on Android's OS, but it's still very experimental and in no way ready for production applications. Otherwise, to mirror "Sam's" comment above, there are no similarities really. I've been building mobile apps for 11 years (delivered over 60 on various Windows flavors) and the Android model is very different than what you might have done in the past on Windows CE 5 or Windows Mobile 6 type systems.
Is it possible to use Android OS for creating apps for Blackberry phone?
Although Android and Blackberry both use Java, they expose very different application APIs to developers. So I don't think it is possible to run Android apps on a Blackberry - YET. RIM has already announced that they are planning on supporting Android apps on the upcoming Blackberry Playbook tablet.
Please clarify. Develop BB apps on an Android machine? Or run Android OS on a BlackBerry device?
The former is plausible, albeit painful, and you'll still need an Android device or emulator to debug. Android machines (read: smartphones and tablets) are not, as a rule, content creation-friendly.
The latter is a epic hack, probably doable but nowhere near straightforward. And will surely void your warranty :)
Despite both platforms being Java-based, the runtime environments are quite different. Neither BB Java nor Android Java is Java ME compliant.
EDIT: Officially, it's not possible to run Android on a Blackberry device. They use their own operating system. Unofficially, who knows. But even if you manage, it will be a hack, not a supported configuration.
Converting apps from Android to BB - it will be more of a rewriting. Unless there's a well-isolated business layer (unlikely in the mobile software world), it will be a complete rewrite rather than conversion.
If you want to create BB apps, download Eclipse and Blackberry SDK, read the Getting started guide, and code away :) Knowing or learning the Java language would also help.
In addition, please note the difference between applications written "on" Android and "for" Android. "For" means "running on Android", "On" implies the actual coding/compiling was performed on an Android machine.
Not all features of Android are supported in Blackberry OS 10, find the link for the same.
I have been developing for Android since some time now and I found Java as proper way of doing development in it. But, now there are number of options available for developing in Android such as Titanium, PhoneGap and Adobe AIR.
The question is who will come as a winner for Android development. I have read lot of comparisons between Titanium, PhoneGap and native Android development. Now, with Adobe entering into it too, what is the future of Android Developers who develop with Java as the programming language.
Since, if one can develop for Iphone and Android with Titanium and Adobe AIR then why will one want to waste time and money for separate development.
The biggest reason I can think of is that using the native language/libraries of the platform (in this case iPhone or Android) is that it will allow you to provide a user interface/experience that is more in line with what the system designers intended over what will likely be possible with something like Adobe AIR.
That doesn't necessarily mean that AIR is bad, or that you might not be able to develop a good application, but since you'd be targeting multiple platforms with the same application code, and each platform has it's own subtle (or major) differences that you can't always account for, you will inevitably be forced to take a "least common denominator" approach to building an application that will run on all of your target platforms and behave consistently across them as well. This might not sit well with some users who expect a certain level of capability as you may not give them a consistent user experience compared to other native applications.
This is a long-standing issue with cross-platform application development -- the design philosophies and behavior of each system are intentionally different (otherwise why would anyone use them?), so your bound to run into problems making an application work 100% the same across them all.
As someone that has done cross-platform development in the past, I can say that while you can do it well in some cases, and using something like Adobe AIR might be a good avenue towards getting more familiar with a particular platform, but a lot of times it's just more prudent to buckle down and build an app using a system's native libraries/languages over a cross-platform solution.
It is quite simple actually. Developing an Android application using Java (the normal APIs) will allow you to a) target possibly all Android devices as all share the same base API and b) it won't put limitations on your application (or at least no limitations with the only limitation being the API).
Now PhoneGap, Titanium and Senza are all web-based frameworks which have certain limitations. You can't access certain functions of your phone as they simply are not some kind of replacement API it's just a framework.
Now Adobe AIR is another story. I'm not sure what functional limitations Adobe AIR will have but I know that there is quite a limitation when it comes to what devices you can target. There are some minimum requirements for Adobe AIR to operate which are
Android Device Requirements for Adobe
AIR
Google Android 2.2 Operating system
ARMv7-A Processor OpenGL ES2.0 H.264 &
AAC H/W Decoders 256 MB of RAM
Which means you can target devices with earlier API versions.
Titanium compiles to native platform controls, but you must to use web languages like HTML and js to develop your application.
With special version for each platform you can design UI following system guidelines.
There seems to be an overall confusion regarding what Titanium is... It compiles to native platform controls.
The majority of the respondents have incorrectly stated that it is web based and that is not true.
However, that is true when it comes to phoneGap
I am going to develop a handheld device which has an Atom processor. I am thinking of using Android embedded OS for running telecom applications on this device. I have heard from my friends that Android is good for wireless applications. But my device does not need any wireless application. I will need only data (ping, traceroute...), IPTV and VoIP applications to run on this device. So is it advisable to use Android for my device?
In my opinion the biggest benefit you get from running a OS like Android as opposed to a tailored Linux distribution are:
An application ecosystem, that integrates well
A UI environment suitable for small screens
An Application SDK that makes developing new apps pretty straightforward
Drawbacks of using Android IMHO:
No standard libc. That means you will have to do some porting, to get mplayer or something similar to play your media content
Way less libraries than you have, when you use a "regular" Linux distribution
You can only create apps with UIs using Java (well there are other possibilities but you probably wouldn't do it)
It comes down to choosing what hurts less. My estimate if you have powerful hardware and a big screen (the combination of Atom and IPTV sounds like that) than using a LFS (Linux From Scratch), Ubuntu or something similar and create a flashy UI on top of that (using QT, OpenGL, GTK, Swing, ...) is less pain than porting your libs & apps to Android.
Of course you loose the sexy Android label which decreases probability of making it to Engadget :-)
Have fun tinkering!
Android uses a Linux kernel, and is designed to support Java applications. So perhaps you need to consider whether Linux and Java are suited to your application. You may be better off with a straight Linux kernel.