Android Development

Android 2.1 SDK is out. The API level changed to 7 but its mainly a minor update.
New stuff: the animated background you already know from Nexus One and a new SignalStrength class which provides information about the device’s current network signal.

Anything else are mainly new methods on already existing classes.

The update is available as a download or as an update in your SDK Manager.

Every new Android SDK Version means that someone has to collect the sources and bundle them. Thanks to the supporter of the missing source jar issue a new source jar is provided. Also please star the issue to flag that issue as important!

Install instructions:

To use it in Eclipse, create a directory sources/ inside your
/platforms/android-1.6/ directory, and unzip the archive there. Start
Eclipse and check that you can see the source, for example ask for the definition of
the Gesture class (new in 1.6), you should see the source code, not the decompiled
byte code.

We will mirror the sources to, so feel free to download and use it!
Android SDK 1.6 sources

If you read my last tutorial entry here, then you may have come across a problem with the code.

If you load several large bitmaps using the BitmapFactory class to decode the bitmap you application will give you the dreaded force close dialogue box. A quick look in the logcat shows that a bitmap exceeds the virtual machine memory budget.

1

ERROR/AndroidRuntime(750): Caused by: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: bitmap size exceeds VM budget

You may wonder how its possible that a few PNG’s can take up all the 16 mb of memory allocation for an application.
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Google has released the first stable version of Android SDK 1.5.
One very important improvement is the full support of Android 1.1.

This SDK includes multiple Android platform versions that you use to develop applications. For each version, both a fully compliant Android library and system image are provided.

The new Android SDK 1.5 has very good improvements, just look for the Release Notes

Yesterday the Android-Team published an early look version of Android SDK 1.5.

The next release will include many improvements and new features. The Android SDK 1.5 Highlights are very interesting but the main point i am looking forward to is the support of multiple versions of Android in a single SDK installation. That will take development to the next level.

One important recommendation : For the moment, don’t update your development installation yet. The new Eclipse ADT version is not compatible with the SDK 1.1. The documentation is just available with the downloadable SDK package.
Using a second instance is the best way to take a look.

One of the annoyances anyone starting android development has to go through is getting hold of the android sdk sourcecode.

Surprisingly the sourcecode does not come bundled with the sdk, nor is there a way to get it seperately as an android-src.jar like with the sun sdks. To top it off, you actually can get the sources by google – but only using MacOS or *nix to check out from their repository.

Even with the recommended OS this is far from a trivial task but concerning developers using windows it’s unfriendly to say the least.
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After the discussion about the restriction concerning downloading and installation of paid applications on developer devices we at least want to simulate installation of free applications on our emulator over the web.

This is the short tutorial how to accomplish that.
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