I am trying to create Android mods and I have an old HTC Magic (Froyo). Is it possible to load 4.0 into this old device? If not, what hardware needs do I have to take into account?
Here is the official compatibility document which details all the must-have and the nice- to-have features for running ICS. A thorough study of this should help you find everything you need.
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/source.android.com/en//compatibility/4.0/android-4.0-cdd.pdf
The one for Jelly Bean should someone come to this question looking for it is at http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/source.android.com/en/us/compatibility/4.1/android-4.1-cdd.pdf
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I know this to some people might sound very stupid question, but is Honeycomb only for tablets? I am making a thesis project developing an Android app for mobile: which version would you suggest I should use? The one that is most popular, I guess?
Yes. currently only for tablets. However the goal is combining the phone and tablet os on the next release, named Icecream Sandwich. It was also said at Google I/O that there will be a Gingerbread release bringing some features from Honeycomb.
See the chart published by google at http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html.
This will give you an idea of which platform to develop for.
Gingerbread 2.3.3 is most popular to develop for right now, it has few new APIs that supported hardware acceleration. And Android Ice Cream Sandwich has backward compatible support for older Android SDK .
I'm starting to broad my developer skills also to the Android development.
I installed all the tools and configurations and every thing seem great, As a default settings I install the 3.2 SDK, but there is not too much docs on that one, mode of what is out there is on the 2.x SDKs.
Is it like IOS, does android have a good backward computability? Can I stay with the 3.x and count on it (with the features that are in the 2.x SDKs) to work on 2.x phones? What are the common version in the Android devices this days? I have lots of newbie develop questions like that, as i want to start from a good starting point and there are lots of materials and tutorials over the web that are not up to date.
Also, does any one know about a good site for this kind of Q&A?
Thank you,
Erez
As of July 5th the version with the largest market share (59.4%) is 2.2 (API Level 8) as shown here
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html so Consequently I would recommend using that as a starting point unless you are solely focusing on the new honeycomb tablets (<1% market share).
As for backward compatibility, android is completely backward compatible for the most part. Unless of course you use a new feature that is only available starting with a certain API level. Google's Android market is good about only allowing apps that will run on a certain API being visible to that phones user. This is enforced by the API level as recorded in the manifest file that is created with every Android app and set by the developer.
To help you with the API level, the SDK docs show what API a feature/object started with in the upper left hand corner. You can also view the specific changes in each platform and it's corresponding API level at http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.
As for a good website to get started I would recommend the developer site at developer.android.com and this website of course. Also the book Android Wireless Application Development by Shane Conder and Lauren Darcey (2 ed) Is very good. (I am not connected with the book just currently reading it). Make sure you get the latest edition.
Hope this helps,
George
Above is good info, but it would be advisable to develop for 2.1 and up at the moment, considering as of this answer's writing, 2.1 makes up 17.5% of the market and 2.2 makes up 59.4% of the market.
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html
OP should also be advised that version 3.x is specifically for tablets, so that may not be the best choice for a starting developer. My advice is to go with 2.1. Most of the documentation is up to date with that, and you won't have access to things you don't need yet (fragments, tablet-specific things)
Hope this helps!
You can read about application forward and backward compatibility in the docs.
Generally apps are forwards compatible but not backward compatible - new APIs introduced in one version are not available in an older version.
This pie chart shows distribution of devices accessing the Android Market and based on this I would try to target devices using 2.1 or newer to cover most of your users.
Your decision should be based on whether you need a feature introduced in a specific version. For example, if you want to add NFC to your app, you'll need Android 2.3.3 or newer, but otherwise there's no reason to exclude older devices.
I recommend learning about Fragments and using the compatibility package to use them on targets below 3.0. This will make it easier to reuse view elements on both tablet and phone devices. Note that if you only intend to develop for phones, 2.3.4 is the latest phone version of Android at the time of writing. Later this year, 3.0 for tablets will merge with the phone version to provide a unified OS version as with iOS.
Android 3.2 is just released publicly on friday, July 15th. You can start-off with Android 2.3.3 and 3.2 installation and development.
Android applications are mostly forward compatible. (But not always)
The best place to find all your answers is developer.android.com
I am looking for reliable data regarding app compatibility to gingerbread (android 2.3)
I cant seem to find any professional information on the subject and i predict that after its launch we'll see a rain of gingerbread devices manly tablets...
One needs to prepare :)
Thanks in advance
Guido
At the time of this writing, there is no Gingerbread, and hence there is no "reliable data regarding app compatibility". You can find out when it is released by watching the Android Developers home page.
how do i come to know which device is compatible to be overhauled with Android OS.
I wanted to know what is the basic hardware requirement.
thanks
Here you've got the requirements: http://source.android.com/compatibility/
You also can download the current CCD there to have a look into the requirements.
I have searched for references on this issue but all of my attempts have been unsucessful so far. I would like to know to what extent does Android supports the OMA DRM specification? Does anyone knows of a reference that states what can be expected from different versions of Android?
It seems that this specification is actually less supported with newer versions of Android (Eclair, Froyo) than it is with older version (Cupcake). For example, in my tests with download descriptors, the devices using Cupcake could download correctly while the devices using Froyo and Eclair showed the DD as xml.
In similar fashion, can we expect the support of the OMA DRM spec. to be the same for all devices running a given version of Android or does it vary with each device? (In different words: is the version of Android tailored for each device by the manufacturer)
You seem to be asking two questions here:
Does Android support OMA DRM?
This was previously asked around the time of Android 1.1 - at the time it was suggested that OMA DRM 2.0 was not supported except by third party libraries. [More recent posts in the google-platform discussion group] suggest that this is still the case.
Could manufacturers customize Android to add OMA DRM?
Yes. If you are planning on manufacturing an Android device that needs this functionality, I would suggest contacting one of the companies mentioned in the aforementioned question. If you are an application developer looking to add this functionality to your application, you would still have to find a manufacturer who has done this, hope that their device is development-friendly, and realize that only users of that specific device will be able to use your application.