Mobile Wars
So I picked up an android developer phone this week to test it out against the iphone (something that I have become addicted too since I learned to stop hating the idouche’s this summer and got one myself).
First off, the android G1 just feels wrong. Like those bad generic windows mobile devices and all the little things add up to a bad taste. (i.e. the usb headphone, awkward keyboard on flip out, the trackball, etc, etc). Now other manufacturers are making android phones and this will improve, but then we get to the os itself. It just feels and acts klunky – nothing about it is pretty and in a day when we prize our identity by the mobile device we wear its like saying I got this because it was on sale a payless. The android reminds me of the swiss army knife I had when I was a kid; The one with way to many things. They all seemed cool, but did you ever try to use the scissors with any success.
But when you really get into the device you find there are some really interesting things – basically the fact that the camera can do macro focus allows it actually take a picture of a barcode or business card and do something useful with it (savyshopper is amazing). The compass aligned with all the other sensors makes for some real potential.
I think android will eat the Microsoft mobile market for lunch, but its not an iPhone killer by any stretch. People that buy apple products do so for a reason and none them are in the android (well as it is now, but I don’t see a decent overall of the ui/ux anytime soon).
For you developers out there – here is a cheatsheet of getting up and running and getting an app onto a phone.
1. Get the android sdk and put the android/tools dir in PATH varibable
2. Get elclipse (you probably have it)
- add wdt
- update android tools
- put the android sdk location in preferences
3. make sure you have java sdk java and have the JAVA_HOME variable set
4. Make or use a sample app from sdk – use tools to export project as apk
5. Sign your apk
make keystore:
keytool -genkey -alias anddev.keystore -keyalg RSA -validity 20000 -keystore keys/anddev.keystore
actually sign your apk
jarsigner -verbose -keystore anddev.keystore -signedjar LunarLanderSigned.apk LunarLander.apk anddev.keystore
6. Put your apk on your device
adb install LunarLanderSigned.apk
(the lunar lander app really sucks btw — in case you were wondering)
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