I'm investigating the possibility to develop Flash or FlashLite apps that runs on Android as stand-alone apps, but I'm not finding anywhere a clear, definitive and up-to-date answer. Questions:
The HTC Hero supports Flash out-of-the-box (without installing it), right?...it's written everywhere, but which version? Flash 9? Flash 10? Flash Lite?
Does the Google Nexus One supports Flash, out-of the box? Must it be installed separately?
Can I develop Flash OR Flash Lite stand-alone apps for Android? What devices will they run on, today? (including Nexus One?)
If "yes" to the previous version...is there any integration with the device capabilities? (camera, gps, access to contacts, accelerometer etc.)
I think a definitive answer to these questions will be useful to many out there!
The only programming example I found is this (http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2009/08/12/flash-development-with-android-sdk-1-5/) and it doesn't help much to understand what I can actually do with it...
Flash Version 10. You can launch standalone apps but not seamlessly, you need to ask the user to select the file. You've already read the link supporting this.
Not yet
As far as I know, using the method described in 1, you will be able to run Flash applications on the following devices (right now, nearly every device should have Flash 10/10.1 by the end of Q2 2010): HTC Hero, Droid Eris
No
Related
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 am about to port my application on android. Since I am new to this system I would like to ask for tips on android phones for testing my app. The number of phones is pretty huge so it is pretty hard to choose the right one. Also I wasn't able to find some kind of official chart of system distribution.
I know that it really depends on hardware and how much my app demands from hardware. It is pretty basic app and I am able to run this app at 30fps on iPhone 4S.
I did some research and people are talking about the latest phones but I think that it is not necessary to buy the newest one. Also, is there option to buy for example tablet and emulate android devices on this tablet?
So my goal is to focus on devices people have the most.
Thank you for any advice.
You can run many of your tests on the Android emulator. Using it together
with the DDMS will allow you to simulate several real life situations
(arriving call, arriving sms, change position...)
You can use BlueStacks which is an emulator put on steroids.
TestFairy and UTest are awsome communities for crowd testing were you can test ~any device you can think of.
Still, it is a good idea, especially if you plan your run at Android to be long,
to maintain a small stash of real devices.
Which devices should you buy? Which OS version should they run?
The Android dashboard is the official source for answering some of these questions. It gives an
up to date statistics of worldwide distribution by OS version, svreen size/density and more:
OS Distribution
Screen type Distribution
So, true to July 2014 you would want devices running Jelly Bean, Gingerbread & ICS and you screens of types normal/hdpi, normal/xxhdpi and normal/xhdpi. This list can grow but even this will provide you with a good sample of the Android device ecosystem.
As for manufacturers, the picture is clear: Samsung is the winner. Exact number &
distributions are harder to find here, but a Google search might help.
If my memory serves me write some 65% of all Android devices are Samsungs made with
Galaxy S3 taking 15% (of ENTIRE Android market) and Galaxy S4 = 10%.
Device screen features:
Galaxy S2 is normal/hdpi
Galaxy S3 is normal/xhdpi
Galaxy S4/S5 is normal/xxhdpi
These will probably be your best bet. You will do smartly to install on them 2-3 different OS versions, at
minimum Jelly Bean and ICS.
The Android Development Tools in Eclipse and Android Studio both have emulators that can be used to emulate different devices, including tablets and phones. You don't need to buy anything to be able to test your app on an emulator. The emulators run on your computer.
For more information
As for what devices most people have, while I don't have official statistics, looking at my own applications' downloads, most people are using either a Nexus 4 or Nexus 5.
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.
I've recently purchased Samsung Galaxy Android phone after using Openmoko phone for 2 years.
One of the reasons for choosing Android was is that it's open sourced.
I don't want to depend on phone maker to provide updates for my phone. I'd like to do it myself.
Right now I'm in research stage if it's worth the time or not. So here are the questions:
I found some tutorials for building ROM images from source. They tell that Android build script will ask for make of the phone before building kernel. Does it mean that all the phone specific stuff is handled by the script or I will have to do some voodoo before I can flash it onto my phone?
Drivers. How are they handled? Are they included in the source as binaries and added automatically (question 1) or will I have to dissect old firmware to get them and put in my build? I realize that would mean some problems with module/kernel versions compatibility.
Is there is something I'm not aware of that would prevent me from building my custom firmware or make it very time-consuming?
I'm not afraid of installing SDK's and toolchains, after all I'm an Openmoko owner.
It's gonna be a little more complicated than that.
On any consumer Android phones I've seen, the user doesn't have root access to the OS. So step one, would be finding an exploit to get root.
Even after you get root, all consumer Android phones "lock" the bootloader to prevent unauthorized OS images from being booted.
The Android OpenSource project only contains device drivers for a small number of phones (Google dev phones, possibly the Nexus One?). For other phones, the drivers are proprietary binaries that the manufacturer loads on the phone. They generally aren't available separately.
Even with all of those obstacles, some enterprising smart guys have managed to create custom "ROM's" that blend the OpenSource release with drivers ripped OEM install on the phone, etc. CyanogenMod is one of the best known and is available for several different Android devices, but unfortunately the Samsung Galaxy does not currently appear to be one of the device supported by Cyanogen.
I found an old link here to a guide to getting root on the Galaxy and loading a custom ROM on it, but unfortunately the ROM they link to doesn't seem to be actively maintained anymore. It might be worth doing some more exhaustive google searches to see if you can find anyone doing active development on the Galaxy.
Is it possible to install Android in a normal mobile phone?
I have Sony Ericsson Naite which has only key pad interface (No touch). I would like to install Android in my phone for experimenting with it. It will be great if its possible to dual boot Android with Symbian :-).
Do we need any other special hardware to install operating system in a mobile phone? Will Android work on a key-pad mobile?
Any pointer/suggestion is appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
The Naite is a fairly simple handset running on the Sony Ericsson JP8 platform.
End users are not supposed to be able to update the firmware on the phone.
Only Sony-Ericsson partners are supposed to get the PC software to update the firmware and only Sony-Ericsson is supposed to be able to create new firmwares.
(maybe you can hack the phone so you get it to boot on android or symbian but that's going to be unsupported behavior that nobody will guarantee)
If you want to experiment with creating your own android firmwares, I suggest buying an ADP2 handset from google.
If you want to experiment with creating your own Symbian firmwares, I suggest buying a Texas Instrument Zoom 2 device since it is the reference platform for Symbian.
The Zoom 2 seems to also support Android, by the way.
If you just want to experiment with application development on both platforms, I suggest using the two SDKs and emulators first.
There are some pretty cheap Symbian phones out there, particularly in the Series60 3rd edition range and, depending on where you live, you might even be able to find a Pay-As-You-Go Android phone like the Pulse.
I STRONGLY encourage you to go visit the XDA Forums and visit their Android sections for this kind of information.