Have you ever spent fruitless hours trying to come up with an attractive user interface design for your mobile application, one that looks good and works well across various Android™ devices? Adam Beckley has. As one of the designers at the mobile solutions company, Mutual Mobile, Beckley had to contend with many of the obstacles that the Android platform presents to designers. The variety of devices and the growing number of form factors make UI design difficult – especially difficult with the lack of design guidelines. So Beckley did something about it. He created an Android Design Guidelines document that addresses some of the key elements of good UI design in an Android environment.
Author Archives: Ed Ort
Fine tune your graphic apps with the Adreno™ Profiler for Xperia™
Sony Ericsson’s latest Xperia™ smartphones, such as Xperia™ PLAY, Xperia™ arc, and Xperia™ neo, support Adreno™ Profiler for Xperia™, a tool to help developers optimise their use of the Adreno 205 graphics processor. Using the Adreno™ Profiler for Xperia™, you can fine tune your code for optimal graphics performance.
This article gives an overview of the Adreno™ Profiler for Xperia™ and identifies some of its key features. For simplicity, the tool will be referred to as the Profiler in the remainder of the article.
Game developer tip 1: Automatically resume download
This is the first in a series of tips that supplement the Xperia™ game developer recommendations. This first tip expands on recommendation AP13: A download should automatically resume if the connection fails.
Maximise the quality of the Android™ games you develop for Xperia™ devices
Do you want to maximise the quality of the Android™ games that you develop for Xperia™ devices such as Xperia™ PLAY? Developer World has documented a core set of recommendations to keep in mind when developing Android games for Xperia™ devices. By following the recommendations, you can ensure a consistent level of quality in the games you develop for these devices.
How to take advantage of the pinch-to-zoom feature in your Xperia™ X10 apps – Part 2
Recently Sony Ericsson rolled out an update to the Android™ 2.1 operating system in its Xperia™ X10 phones. One of the important new features in the update is support for a multi-touch gesture called pinch-to-zoom. The first part of this two-part tutorial showed how to take advantage of the pinch-to-zoom feature in your apps. In this second part of the tutorial, you’ll examine a code example that uses the pinch-to-zoom feature.
How to take advantage of the pinch-to-zoom feature in your Xperia™ X10 apps – Part 1
Recently Sony Ericsson rolled out an update to the Android™ 2.1 operating system in its Xperia™ X10 phones. One of the important new features in the update is support for a multi-touch gesture called pinch-to-zoom. In this first part of a two-part tutorial, you will learn how to take advantage of the pinch-to-zoom feature in your apps. In the second part of the tutorial, you’ll examine a code example that uses the pinch-to-zoom feature.
Find the tools and services you need in the Developer resources section
Are you looking for a way to build a mobile app that can run cross-platform? Do you need help in advertising your app? Do you want to integrate social networking into your app? You can find tools and services that can help you do these things and more in the Developer resources section on Developer World.
How to easily connect your mobile apps to Facebook™

It’s now easier than ever to connect your Android TM apps to FacebookTM . The Facebook SDK for Android enables you to connect your Android app to the Facebook platform with just a few lines of JavaTM code. In addition, if you use the SDK, you’ll be able to take advantage of some pretty powerful Facebook features.
Four ways to make money with mobile apps

Have you ever thought about how to make money on mobile apps? Developer World asked Gregory Kennedy, Director of Global Marketing at mobile ad network provider InMobi, to share his insights on revenue models that make money for mobile app developers.
Xperia™ PLAY touch pad tutorial now available

Are you a game developer? The new Xperia™ PLAY features an analog touch pad for full gaming experiences. And the good thing is, you will be able to utilize it for your games too! You can use native code, that is, code written in C or C++, in conjunction with the Android™ Native Development Kit (NDK) to access touch events from the Xperia™ PLAY touch pad. Please note that you cannot use the Android SDK to access these touch events.