I am planning on purchasing the Motorola Atrix 4G for AT&T. As is, you will not be able to side load apps without using Sideload Wonder or something similar.
Does Google App Inventor work with AT&T phones?
Of course, it should. The preferred way to work with Google App inventor is through the use of the usb cable anyway (forget Sideload Wonder, Google App inventor is a very different animal, it's not like your standard Android developer tools at all).
The reason you'll want to use the usb cable (the one that will come with your phone) is because any changes you make to the blocks you're editing will appear immediately on your phone, and the rapid feedback you get from App Inventor (as opposed to ADT/adb/Eclipse) is absolutely phenomenal.
That being said, are you really sure you want to learn App Inventor? If you're serious about developing for Android, you'll want to use the more traditional Android developer tools.
App Inventor doesn't give you access to the source (to them, the visual blocks are the source), and even if they wanted to give you access to the source, it would just look like partially compiled Scheme/LISP anyway. So App Inventor is a great tool for kids/teenagers/beginners/teachers/hobbyists, it's a great tool for learning how to program in general, it's even a better and more sophisticated tool than most of the most traditional developer tools I've seen, but don't count on it if you really intend to program on Android for professional reasons.
At the very least, you'll be able to export your apps from App Inventor and sideload them manually each time using Sideload Wonder. It would seem silly to me to release a phone that wouldn't work with developer tools, but there are plenty of examples of AT&T being a bit silly when it comes to openness.
Related
I very vaguely remember hearing about some technology awhile ago (maybe NFC?) that somehow made it possible for a user to install an app on a phone simply by bringing it close (or maybe tapping it?) to a sales kiosk with the appropriate hardware. However, I'm having trouble finding any reference to this technology, and I'm starting to wonder if I dreamt it up.
Regardless, my question is this: I know you normally install apps through the iOS/Android app store, but for either ecosystem is there any alternative way (with the user's permission of course) to install an app from a nearby device such as another phone, blue tooth transmitter, etc.?
As Douglas Junior suggested in the comments, there is currently no way to install iPhone apps outside of the app store.
In the Android ecosystem there is a way, using Android Beam:
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/nfc.html#p2p
However, this is probably a dead-end for most people, as there's no point in setting up a kiosk that only half your customers can use.
I want to get into developing apps for Android because of its large userbase. However, at the moment I do not have a smartphone. I'm also not too keen on getting an Android phone in the future.
What problems could I encounter when developing apps for Android solely using an emulator? I could use my parents' Android phones for the occasional testing, but will an emulator prove sufficient otherwise? Furthermore, is it possible to set up an Android Virtual Device with low-end hardware on my computer to test out apps with low-end phones?
note0: I do not plan on developing apps which require use of the phone's sensors (such as gyros, GPS, etc.) I only plan on developing apps which require internet access for API calls and perhaps microphone usage (I can't give away too many details right now ;) )
note1: I know this question has been asked before on stackoverflow (albeit 4 years ago). However, I feel it is important to revisit the question because emulators, hardware, and Android itself have changed enormously in the last few years.
edit: My main issues are problems like the app looking weird on the phone despite it looking fine on the emulator or working slowly on the phone but working fine on the emulator. Will every app which works fine on the emulator work fine on the phone as well with a similar hardware configuration as the emulator? I'm in particular targetting devices with Android 4.x/5.x.
Without a doubt, the biggest problem is that many functions like push
notifications, maps, geo-location, in-app vending etc. cannot be
tested with an emulator. The reason is that all these functions are
present in the Google Play Services library which is not present on
emulators.
Another important reason for testing on hardware devices is that the
OS implementation is changed by manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and
others, and therefore, certain problems & exceptions are not observed
till a real device is used.
But the most important reason has to be that running apps on an
actual phone is a hell of a lot more fun that it is with the painfully
slow and retarded emulators! One of the most important things about
Android is that anybody with an Android phone can easily explore
computer science concepts by running simple programs on their phone.
It is incredibly easy, even for a novice, to just fire up their
Android device and start exploring the world of programming! Till just a few years back, it was incredibly difficult to debug an app on a Symbian or Palm or WinCE device. iOS is still as retarded when it comes to running the simplest apps, you have to create a provisioning profile to run a Hello World app on an iPhone!
EDIT:
If your processor supports Intel virtualization, then the emulator can be made to run as fast as a real device. You need to check that out. If your PC is low-end in the sense that it does not support such virtualization, then running and testing Android apps will be a painful, tedious experience that will suck all the fun out of the development process.
Emulators do have one significant advantage over real devices - an emulator is able to access web services on a localhost. If you are still in development phase on your local server and have not yet shifted to a publicly hosted environment, the emulator can easily access web services on a local server. All you have to do is put your computer on the same network as the local server and you're good to go. A real device cannot access a localhost; its impossible, as far as I know.
The Android emulator is a true emulator - it emulates sensors as well, so in fact you can test sensor programming (with some limitations) on an emulator. It cannot do things like GPS, maps etc. because those features have been migrated to the Google Play Services library, and they require a valid Google account to be used, which is why that library is not present on an emulator. If you only plan to work with web services, APIs', GUIs' then I suppose an emulator is more than sufficient. Unlike the iOS simulator, an Android emulator generally exhibits the WYSIWYG behavior, so your GUI will not differ on actual devices, although you do need to test your GUI on multiple AVDs' with different screen form factors.
I have an android app with more than 500,000 users. I want to try to port it to WinPhone7, but I haven't any smartphone with WinPhone7. Is a real device needed to publish an app on WinPhone? Is there some developper phone?
First of all, I will say that for some scenarios, there is no real substitute for have a physical device to test against. Having said that, I would suggest that 99% of what most apps will do can be developed and test perfectly well on the emulator that comes with the developer tools.
The advantage of the emulator is that you can write and test without shelling out for the hardware and then signing up to create.msdn.com to get it (officially) unlocked, but once you are ready to deploy to the marketplace you will need to sign up anyway.
In your case, I'd say the main word in your question is "try". You don't seem confident in being able to port to the platform so the emulator route seems like the best starting point.
Your will find a Windows Phone 7 emulator in the Windows Phone SDK. You can download it for free on create.msdn.com.
There is an Android to Windows Phone API mapping tool and Windows Phone 7 Guide for Android Application Developers white paper as described on the Windows Phone Developer Blog that you should find very useful.
For getting a development device, you should reach out to Brandon Watson or your local Microsoft WP7 dev rep.
Simple answer - no, you don't. There are plenty of applications out there that were published without being tested on an actual device. Whether it's a good idea or not - that is the main question here. Depending on your application type and its behavior, you might actually need a device.
Also, another problem is the fact that the resources used by the emulator are different from the resources used by the actual device. That being said, if your application runs just fine in the emulator, it will not necessarily run the same way on a device.
You can use the WP7 emulator to test your application. But if you want to deploy it on a real phone, you will have to unlock it though the App Hub portal. That will cost you 100 dollar/year though.
As you and others have rightly pointed out, you can start porting your application using the emulator. There are differences in the emulator and real devices. In particular, to answer your question, emulator does not take pictures.
If your Android app really has half a million users, MS will happily give you a developer device (nearly) for free.
Contact #BrandonWatson or #FrankPR on Twitter.
From my experience I can tell you, that the emulator works very well. But once in a while you will stumble about a problem that you don't understand why it happens. Then you try it on the phone and it works... So... The answer is yes...not!
I would like to learn mobile development for fun and as well to enrich my resumé.
I'm currently developing in C/C++ at work on Windows (and sometimes with C# that I don't like too much). I have a nice Android phone and an iPod touch, so I wonder what is the best enviroment on which work.
Sure iPhone/iOS now has huge user base and a lot of attention, but it is used just i
on 3 devices from a single vendor (iPhone + iPod touch + iPad), Android instead is used by a lot of vendors, however is not gaining the attention it deserves.
I own a MacBook white so I can develop for iOS (I even have installed XCode but it seems a mess to me), but I prefer to work on Windows and I downloaded Android SDK + Eclipse and it seems much more easy given my Visual Studio background. I also know some Java and I'm already resigned to Linux.
So... which one should I learn, also given my background?
I don't think there is a real Answer to your question but since you already have the Android SDK and Eclipse set up why not try that first. Then if you don't like it try something else.
I found it very easy to deploy application on the Android Market and the registration fee is very small.
Android programming is a little bit difficult. Apple provide, in its development tool, a storyboard system that make very simple to control the flow of the app. Android is a bit more complicated.
On the other side, Apple programming is expensive: you need at least a Mac Book, an one between Iphone or Ipad. Last but not least, you need to sign to the apple developer program if you want to publish the app or to test it on a real device, which means 80 dollar/year. You can develop even without the program, and without a real device (iphone or ipad), but this means no possibility to test on a real device, which provides some characteristics that the simulator doesn't provide. And still you need a Mac, for Xcode (the apple developer tool) is only for Mac.
I believe though that is only your choice. Personally, i would begin with Apple in order to start with something that is simple at the beginning, but only if you have all the instruments listed above. For fun, Android is better: more complicated but free.
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I've been intrigued by all the android world since I first learned about it and would like to get my hands dirty developing for it. The question that comes to mind is if it's worth buying the unlocked phones that Android sells directly or not.
Those phones (link) quoting the Android page:
Run and debug your Android™
applications directly on a device.
Modify and rebuild the Android
operating system, and flash it onto a
phone. The Android Dev Phone 1 is
carrier independent, and available for
purchase by any developer registered
with Android Market™.
Please note that this device is
intended for development purposes, and
may not include certain features found
on consumer Android devices.
So will it be worth it to purchase one of those as a tool for app testing as opposed to developing and testing just on Eclipse or one of the other IDEs and emulators.
-Have you tried it, do you own one?
I'm assuming they have the same specs as the HTC Dream and the HTC Magic, since they look exactly the same although they have a 'developers edition' custom black design not that I really care about the design for this particular item.
All comments are welcomed,
Thanks in advance.
Update:
I'll leave it open until tomorrow to see if there are any more answers, then I'll just pick the most voted since it's really a subjective question with no good or bad answer.
It depends what sort of applications you wish to develop. I find that the emulators very accurately reflect how things work on genuine devices; you can seamlessly connect to either an emulator or a dev phone using the command line tools, the Eclipse tools, the debugger etc.
Also, while you can flash your dev phone to a new OS version, HTC often lag behind (e.g. there's still no 2.0 image available) and it's much easier and faster to just use the emulators. The emulators also allow you to create and test with different screen resolutions, whereas the two dev phones available are only "standard" resolution.
I find it's quite rare that I need to use my ADP1 dev phone for development -- my rooted consumer HTC Hero works fine for most of the development I do.. allowing me to pull files from the device etc. Though the only reason I use my Hero rather than an emulator is because I've been working on an app that uses audio recording functionality.
However, where having a physical device would help is where you need to do specific stuff regarding the camera, audio hardware, orientation and compass sensors, GPS, wireless network access and so on. Should you need to connect a debugger to work on hardware-related issues like the above, then you would definitely need a dev phone.
Overall, it's definitely worth buying an Android phone for testing and demonstration purposes, but whether it's a development phone is up to your requirements.
If you plan on developing apps that you intend to put on the Android marketplace, it's absolutely critical to test on real hardware. You can get away with developing on the emulator for quite a while, but at some point, you'll want to use a real device.
That being said, you can use any android phone for development. There are some restrictions on locked devices, but if you're simply developing against the SDK, any phone will work. With android, you can install an apk directly on the phone without special permissions, so the only real advantage to a dev phone is that you can install new roms without having to root the phone.
Personally, I'd hold off on purchasing one of the older dev phones. From what I understand, they only support up to SDK 1.6, whereas the Droid and some of the other new phones are supporting SDK 2.0 ++.
Wait for the release of the Nexus One from G. The latest rumors are that it'll be released on Jan 5th. So it's just a week or so.
I think that you need a real android device whether it's the dev phone or another handset but a real phone is primordial. The emulator is great but you can't get an idea about the execution speed of your app until you use it on a real phone.
As said before there are a lot of rumors about the nexus one so wait and see!
As for which phone to buy (assuming you're going to get one) I think ablerman is right. I'd wait until January to see if there is going to be some new hardware available.
With regards to the more general question of should you buy one, I think it depends on what you're doing. For the most part, the emulators are fine. They can emulate GPS (you can even load KML to simulate a path), SMS, phone calls, etc. They cannot however emulate acclerometer/compass/orientation sensor data and actually will crash (actually I believe it hangs...) if you try to run code that relies on it. Also, it's difficult to actually debug phone-call related functionality without the dev phone.
They're good phones, I've used the Dev phone 1 (the G1/Dream) and it's nice. It also is a bit faster than the emulators and if you're writing something like a game, it would be really good to test it on the actual hardware.
All in all, it just depends on what you're writing. They're definitely fun to play with regardless as you can do pretty much ANYTHING you want on them.
Good luck with the decision!
I've been developing with the emulator since June. I've found it to be a very near substitute for the real deal, and it's easier to switch between handset configurations/versions. However, not knowing how quickly my apps will run is a concern for me.
The reason I've personally held off buying a handset is that 2009 was the wrong year to buy one. I have a feeling 2010 will very much be the long-awaited "Year of the Android".
+1 to Christopher and I will add - the emulators are great but having a physical phone will give you instant access to the Android Market to verify publishing, statistics and user comments. I also believe using your own app on a physical phone will help you to develop a better app. You do not need a development phone - but at least one physical phone - absolutly.
FYI. Belgium is one of the few countries where it is possible to buy any mobile unlocked. Indeed, the Belgian regulators forbid the forced bundling.
One more Pros for buying a real developer phone :
HierarchyViewer does not work on user builds (i.e. with devices
available in stores.) This is for security reasons.
See the original thread
Hierarchy viewer can be very useful if you have problems with layout being slow, although I don't think it would worth buying a real Developer phone only for this.
As some people made workaround for that problem : https://stackoverflow.com/a/7801475/62921.