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.
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I'm looking for the cheapest simplest way to test my react-native apps on a physical device and am looking to buy an android device as my test mule.
The android fire tablet seems to be the cheapest one I can find - but I don't know if it has a bunch of custom Amazon adware that will make testing my custom apps on it difficult or problematic.
Should I be able to test my react-native app builds on Amazon fire just like any other android device - or will does it have customizations that will cause problems?
Do you have any other suggestions for a cheap, pain-free device to buy for android testing.
Yes you should be able to run your app. The amazon devices are only an issue if you use google libraries like play services. Just to be safe you can test the compatibility of your app with amazon devices on the following link: https://developer.amazon.com/app-testing-service
I have developed an Android app which works well on mobiles and tablets. Recently I have installed it on Amazon fireTV and I see that some screens are not responding for touch events. I tried using the physical remote and the Amazon fireTV remote app but no use.
I have a screen with list of videos and I want to go through each of them but I couldn't do it. I have read that most (75%) of the Android apps work fine on Amazon fireTV. Do I have to develop my app using any Amazon SDK to make it work on TV? Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.
NOTE: Posted this question in Android Enthusiasts but I got to know it's off-topic there, so I'm posting it here.
In order to work well, there are some things you need to do differently for TV apps (whether for Amazon Fire TV or Android TV). You can find help for navigation here: https://developer.android.com/training/tv/start/navigation.html
There is also helpful information here:
https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-tv/overview/developing-apps-and-games-for-amazon-fire-tv
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.
I recently release an app for Kindle Fire. The app was approved by the amazon store, but was rejected for kindle. Following feedback was given :
We have recently evaluated your app’s compatibility with Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet. This added test process is here to verify that every app available for download on Kindle Fire will provide our customers with a high-quality experience on their devices. Your existing submission of XXXXXXXX has been found to be incompatible with Kindle Fire due to the following:
Upon completion of our compatibility test processes, your app was found to be unresponsive when subjected to testing. To be compatible with Kindle Fire, the app’s core features must be responsive to user commands, and its primary functionality accessible and compliant with device specifications.
Please review these issues and update your submission to address the incompatibility. You may find it helpful to review the Kindle Fire FAQ in the Amazon Appstore Developer Portal.
Has anyone got any pointers on what could be wrong ?
Never developed for amazon, but the text seems to point out that your app freezes the user input in a certain situation.
Maybe there is some data retrieval that is not done in a separate process and freezes the ui?
I just received the same response from them and, I to, have apps they approved for their store, tested on, based on the Flurry analytics I'm using, less powerful devices than the Kindle Fire. It's pretty vague too, wish they offered a developer tablet or some more details. Only thing you can do is maybe guess what is unresponsive and hope it passes next time.
Sounds like you're getting ANRs. Read tips on how to avoid this here: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/design/responsiveness.html
but most of the time it's caused by doing something long running (usually network calls) on the UI thread. Make sure you spawn another thread being doing a network call.
If you have access to a Motorola Xoom running Honeycomb 3.2 you might want to test your app on that. My app was rejected by Amazon because they experienced blank screens. I've tested it thoroughly on Kindle Fire and have never seen that behavior. It was only when I emphasized that point with the Amazon reviewer that I learned they were not testing on their own device but on Motorola's Xoom running an obsolete OS that I don't want to support. I now have a Xoom and my app runs fine on it under ICS but is quite buggy with Honeycomb.
I have heard that the ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet doesn't have the Google APIs SDK, but rather the plain vanilla Android 1.6 OS build. Is this true? And does anyone know of any other devices like this currently on the market or in the works?
I'm particularly interested in phones, but would like to know about any such devices. My company adds maps to our apps but they are often optional, so I'd like to know if I need to be worried that these apps won't be available to non-maps devices.
There are a bunch of Android-based tablets out there (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_devices). The link doesn't have information as to whether or not they have Google apps installed, but if you do some research, you can find more info. The 1&1 Smartpad for example doesn't seem to have proprietary Google apps (I don't see any on the screenshots: http://www.slashgear.com/11-smartpad-android-tablet-drops-in-germany-3092321/).
Now the thing to keep in mind is that if a device doesn't have Google Maps, it probably doesn't have Market either. (To go back to the 1&1 example, I see a "1&1 Market" app on the screenshots).
Your best bet may be to provide your app on all known major app sites (http://www.andappstore.com, etc) and even your company's website in addition to the Google Market to maximize exposure. Al Sutton's andappstore in particular is a popular site for people with Android-based devices that don't have the market.