Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Android 3.0 – Peak and Dip

We have been wondering why there is a huge hype around “Android 3.0”. After going through many articles and demos, we realized the cool reasons behind such hype which will be highlighted in this post.  . We believe this is the right forum for us to share our views and experience. Come, let’s explore some cool features and some speculations out there about “Android 3.0”.

What are the cool pieces of Android 3.0 which is code named as “Honeycomb”? (Google follows alphabetical order in naming Android versions).
The major reason is the rich UI support for large screen. We read that they support “holographic” which means it will have 3D effect of widgets.  Widgets would allow you to load up multiple items like album, movie etc.
“Multi Tasking” – With “Android 3.0” you will be able to see the recent application in system bar rather than just name of the application or just an icon in earlier versions.

“Dual Core Support” – Oh! Yeah we have first multi core support “Mobile Operating System” now in the world. Well, Android will run their garbage collection in one core and applications will be executed in another core for better performance. This will allow users to build the applications for the new hardware architecture.
There are other exciting features like
  • Redesigned Key Board with better text selection, copy and paste options
  • New GUI for Contacts, Mail etc
So far so good, but we mentioned there are some bottom side!! what is that? It is all about - Is Google forks “Android”?- If you look at the versions 2.3 and 3.0 it clearly states that 3.0 goes its own way and Google is trying to have two different versions of Android, one is to support Mobile and another to support large screen devices that is tablet. Google claims Android 3.0 is built entirely for Tablet.
So, how it affects developer? Do we need to write two different codes for same application to target Mobile and Tablet? We really don’t have clear answer for this particular question because Gingerbread and Honeycomb targets different development environments but Android 3.0 supports all features of 2.x APIs. The applications built on top of 2.x can be upgraded without any code changes but to get the “Holographic” UI developers are required to do some changes in manifest file.
You can turn out and ask us this is exactly Apple does. They too have different environments for iPad, iPhone, but why are you questioning us? – Yes valid question but the in iPad and iPhone case the device maker is same “Apple”. But in Android’s case there are many players building devices and they have got their own UI layer hence developer can’t build or test their applications against each of them. That is the bottom side from developer stand point.
Watch out:-
Over all, We agree with “We weren’t blown away by the iPad

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

AFAIK applications would run the same way irrespective of the UI layer implemented by manufacturers, which would be part of the OS.
Can you please clarify on this.

Siva said...

This would answer ...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/android-30-hell-yes-its-a-fork-but-who-cares/15703

Siva

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I enjoyed the cool features and features of the Android. I am not the one who just benefited on this but almost. Those humours were just a hinder to the customer to purchase.

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Marco Wills said...

It is always nice to read about the Android's beginning versions; though at present we have seen so many versions, but the old ones made a mark in their market because of the functionalities that is why the present ones are surviving.

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