By Joe Padre
14th October 2010. 17:30
Tag Archives: android
The Android force was strong at last week’s CTIA Enterprise & Applications 2010 event in San Francisco, CA, USA. Almost a dozen Android devices were showcased – some with large touchscreens, qwerty keyboards, and dual cameras – along with the latest in mobile applications and services.
The show’s Android Bootcamp, hosted by SVAndroid, further provided a broad range of technical and business information from Android experts, solution leaders, and developers, and included an opportunity for Android startup companies to demo apps live in front of the audience.
Read about the CTIA event in more detail on the Developer World site. And remember to check our Event Calender for upcoming events.
I hope you haven’t missed Developer World’s new Phone gallery where you can compare phones, filter on different features and functions, view technical specifications and much more. Check out the new Phone gallery and explore more!
In case you have not seen it, Google™ yesterday announced that developers will soon be able to sell apps on Android Market in 18 new countries, including Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan. There will then be 32 countries in total where you can sell and buy applications in Android Market.
Google also announced that developers from 20 new countries will be able to submit applications for sale on Android Market. This makes it possible for developers from 29 countries in total to sell paid apps. The new countries are Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.
More info can be found on the Android developers blog.
This is really good news and we are looking forward to see expansion into more markets.
Erik Hellman.
Ever wondered how a manufacturer goes about to implement Android on a phone? Interested in how Sony Ericsson works with the Android platform? Erik Hellman from Sony Ericsson will present his experiences from working with Android at the Android Only event in Stockholm, Sweden, on Sept 29-30.
You’ve heard it here first… we’re announcing the rollout of our new Sony Ericsson Device Loaner Program. You guys had been asking for it, and we listened, and decided to take immediate action. To get the program up and running as soon as possible, we’ve partnered with an experienced U.S. vendor, Vienna Channels, to help facilitate the phone loaner service and logistics.
It’s a fairly quick and easy process to get signed up to borrow a Sony Ericsson phone. I signed up myself and it only took a few minutes. Once you’re fully signed up with Vienna Channels, there are a lot of great features on the Device Loaner Program site. For example, from the Products menu on the main page, you can view phone specifications and check real-time inventory levels of the phones available. From the Reports menu, you can even generate custom shipment reports.
Since the program is still new and inventory is limited, only one phone per developer/order is currently allowed. For now, two models are available – Xperia™ X10a phone and Xperia™ Mini Pro – but we will be continuously adding new phone models to the inventory list. You’ll also need to have a valid credit card when signing up, to pay for the shipping costs. If the device is not returned, the full cost of the device plus a 10% restocking fee will be charged to your credit card. The program is initially aimed at the U.S./Canadian market, but if you’re ordering outside of North America, please be aware that you’ll be paying for international shipping fees, plus applicable customs/duties for your particular destination.
If you have any questions about the Sony Ericsson Device Loaner Program, send an email to sonyericsson1@viennachannels.com.
A couple of days ago I got into a plane heading for Tokyo Game Show 2010. For all of you who are not attending this amazing event, I thought I should share my impressions after the first 2 days here.
Mobile Monday in Malmö, Sweden, took place this week and it was a really nice event with inspiring presentations from several different speakers, including Troed Sångberg from Sony Ericsson. The main theme was the Future of Openness (in Mobile), and a lot of people were very interested in how Sony Ericsson is working with openness and Android.
Read more about what was said on the Developer World site.
This Saturday, retro gaming was in focus at the Hackathon developer event in Stockholm. I got a hold of Peter Svensson, organiser of the event, to find out how it went.
Live wallpapers are fun and eye-catching, but an incorrect implementation of a live wallpaper can quickly drain the battery of any powerful Android™ phone. This tutorial will explain how big this problem can be, what the reasons are and show you a code example on how you can avoid this happening to your live wallpapers.
A live wallpaper in Android™ is implemented as an Android™ service and will stay alive running in the background as long as it is the currently active wallpaper. As a developer you will have access to hardware and framework components such as the camera, GPS, compass, accelerometer and 3D graphics, just as for any Android™ services and applications. The possibility to create a live wallpaper enhanced with visual effects and features are more or less unlimited. However, it must be remembered that from a power consumption perspective the more complex drawings and hardware features you add will affect the overall performance and battery life time since the Android™ framework will make sure that the live wallpaper service is kept alive forever. This is especially critical if the live wallpaper misbehaves in the background. The unintended power consumption can then quickly drain the battery and the user will be far from happy having to recharge the phone all too often.
Two examples
Let’s compare two live wallpapers in a test scenario where the user wakes up the phone from standby, switches to a live wallpaper and then puts the phone back to standby. The graph (ampere on Y-axis, time on x-axis) to the left shows a live wallpaper that handles the resources correct and the graph to the right shows a wallpaper that keeps listening for events from the orientation sensor even when it is put back to sleep.
From the graph to the left you can see that when all resources are turned off the live wallpaper is back to consuming as much current as before the phone woke up from sleep, around 3-5 mA in average. However, in the graph to the right the live wallpaper keeps listening to events from the orientation sensor even when the phone is put to sleep and the power consumption is around 35 mA in average.
In this post I will cover a few important guidelines on how reduce power consumption of polling Android applications, i.e. applications that regularly connect to the internet, and get more out of the phone battery. I have crated a small sample app that puts all of the tricks into practice by setting up a background service that polls Twitter trends regularly and logs them to a file. By downloading the sample app and applying these guidelines, you will reduce the power consumption of your app by magnitudes, if you haven’t before. Click here to download the sample app.
We will cover four guidelines:
1. Synchronize you polls with other apps
2. Make polls short
3. Manage your connections
4. Stop your services
![Showing HTML5 device orientation on Xperia with Ice Cream Sandwich [demo]](http://img.youtube.com/vi/Q4CTkjaYumM/default.jpg)
