February 15, 2012 in Other
From Mark Brown blog:
Earlier today I gave a talk at Android Builders Summit about TinyHAL, a generic audio HAL for Android aimed providing a better basis for system integrators to work from. More details on TinyHAL and slides from the talk can be found over at the Wolfson Open Source web site.
December 23, 2011 in Other, Programming, Tutorials, Tutorials
This is a conceptual overview of how Android’s 2D Canvas rendering pipeline works. Since Android’s Canvas API is mostly a pretty thin veneer on top of Skia it should also serve as a reasonable overview of Skia’s operation, though I’ve only looked at Skia code that’s reachable from Android’s SDK, and when the Skia and Android terminology differ (which is rare, modulo “Sk” prefixes and capitalization) I’ve used the Android terminology.
I wrote this overview because I’ve been doing some Android development recently, and I was getting frustrated by the fact that the documentation forandroid.graphics, particularly when it comes to all of the things that can be set in a Paint object, is extremely sparse. I Googled, and I asked a question on Stack Overflow but I couldn’t find anything that explained this stuff to my satisfaction.
This overview is based on reading what little documentation exists (often “between the lines”), doing lots of experiments to see how fringe cases work, poring over the code, and doing even more experiments to verify that I was reading the code correctly. I started writing it as notes for myself, but I figured others might benefit as well so I decided to post it here.
I say this is a “conceptual” overview because it does not always explain the actual implementation. The implementation is riddled with special cases that attempt to avoid doing work that isn’t necessary. (I remember hearing some quote along the lines of “the fastest way to do something is to not do it at all”.) Understanding the implementation details of all of these special cases is unnecessary to understanding the actual end-result, so I’ve focused on the most general path through the pipeline. I actually avoided looking at the details of a lot of the special-case code, so if this code contains behavioral inconsistencies I won’t have seen them.
Also, there are cases, particularly in the Shading and Transfer sections, where the algorithm described here is far less efficient but easier to visualize (and, I hope, understand) than the actual implementation. For example, I describe Shading as a separate phase that produces an image containing the source colors and Transfer as a phase producing an image with intermediate colors. In reality these two “phases” are interleaved such that only a small set (often just one) of the pixels from each of these virtual images actually “exists” at any instant in time. There is also short-circuiting in this code such that the source and intermediate colors aren’t computed at all for pixels where the mask is fully transparent (0x00).
This does mean that this overview can’t give one an entirely accurate understanding of the performance (speed and/or memory) of various operations in the pipeline. For that it would be better to performing experiments and profile.
Also keep in mind that because this is documenting what is arguably “undocumented behavior” it’s hard to say how much of what is described here is stuff that’s guaranteed versus implementation detail, or even outright bugs. I’ve used some judgement in determining where to put the boundaries between phases (all of that optimization blurs the lines) based on what I think is a “reasonable API” and I’ve also tried to point out when I think a particular behavior I’ve discovered looks more like a bug than a feature to rely on.
There are still a number of cases where I’d like to do some more experimentation to verify that my reading of the code is correct and I’ve tried to indicate those below.
December 7, 2011 in News, Other
Google’s Android operating system has undergone a pretty incredible metamorphosis in the three short years since it debuted on the T-Mobile G1. Think about it: three years, eight major releases. Eight. To put that in perspective, there have only been ten major consumer-grade releases of Windows (give or take, depending on how you count) in over twenty-five years of retail availability. You could make a pretty convincing argument that no consumer technology in history has evolved as quickly as the smartphone, and Android has been at the very center of that evolution.
With the release of Android 4.0 — Ice Cream Sandwich — on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, we wanted to take a look back through the years at how Andy Rubin’s brainchild has evolved into the industry titan that it is today. What’s changed? What has (sometimes stubbornly) stayed the same?
Read the rest of the visual history
August 23, 2011 in Other
By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Aug 22, 2011 4:00 PM
The lucky people who managed to buy a US$99 TouchPad before they sold out just got luckier: A group of developers is working on a way to load Android onto the tablets.
Hewlett-Packard said last week it would stop making the TouchPad and that it was exploring options for the webOS software that runs on the device. It has also dropped the price of the 16GB TouchPad to $99, making it one of the best tablet deals around.
Still, people who bought it took a risk, since it’s not clear if HP will continue to develop the operating system. That risk may now pay off since the TouchPad could become the best-value Android tablet.
Three developers and other supporters have launched the TouchDroid project and plan to soon begin porting an older version of Android, known as Gingerbread, to the tablets.
“So you’ve plunked down your $99/$149, and you’re staring at that WebOS screen… Welcome to a grand effort to port Android to the HP Touchpad,” they wrote on a wiki page about the project.
The group is having to start its work with Gingerbread because Google has not released the source code for Honeycomb, the version of Android for tablets that first became available on the Motorola Xoom in February. Once Ice Cream Sandwich, the next version of Android, becomes available, they’ll focus on that version of the OS, according to the wiki site.
The developers said there’s no way to know how long it will be before they can release a working version of Android for the tablet. “Figure this will take a good long while. Keep your expectations very low and for now enjoy WebOS,” the site says.
Further complicating the initiative, some of the developers don’t yet have TouchPads.
“Until all of the #touchdroid developers receive their devices, project development will be very slowor at a standstill this week,” according to the HPTouchDroid Twitter feed.
Article By Rachel King on zdnet:
Already the leader for the past few months, Android has once again found itself in the top spot for June amongst smartphone platforms in the United States, based on the latest report from comScore.
Android managed to push even farther in June as its share of subscribers increased 5.4 percent to 40.1 percent overall. Apple’s iOS was the only other platform that managed to grow, which did ever so slightly by 1.1 percent to 26.6 percent overall.
Unsurprisingly, RIM dropped the most out of the top five by 3.7 percent, but it still managed to hold on to the third spot. Microsoft declined a bit as did Nokia’s Symbian, which is only going to continue as Nokia is moving away from Symbian to join forces with Microsoft on Windows Phone.
Overall, comScore reported that 78.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones by June, up eight percent from the preceding three month period.
As for mobile OEMs, Samsung secured the victory on those charts (likely with some help from Android). The South Korean tech giant grew by a tiny amount (0.8 percent), but it still garnered roughly a quarter of the pie at 25.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers.
LG and Apple were the only other two mobile OEMs in the top five to grow, at second and fourth place respectively. Motorola dropped in the market share by 1.3 percent and placed third, while RIM rounded out the top five as it dropped half a percent.
August 3, 2011 in Other
Almost three years after the birth of the T-Mobile G1, the world’s first Android smartphone, we pause to take a look back at what the little green dude has given us. Sure, we’ve known that the OS has been very busy in the United States and around the world, but we really had no idea just how busy it was. And if we expanded the list beyond handsets not with U.S. carriers, it would be even longer.
Remember that it wasn’t so long ago when Android was just a concept. And not long before that, the only android we knew was Data on “Star Trek.” But now as its market share continues to grow and the OS has landed in the tablet space, Android has emerged as a powerhouse in the mobile space.
Editors’ note: This list is current as of August 2, 2011. For brevity’s sake, we’ve focused only on models previously or currently sold by U.S. carriers.
Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20016542-251/a-brief-history-of-android-phones/#ixzz1TzWAS6A2
Two different graphs. Both happen to be published at Ars Technica, with one of them coming from a different source. Seemingly completely unrelated, but when you ponder the waterfall of recent lawsuit-related news, these two graphs suddenly tell all there is to tell. These two innocent little graphs illustrate why Apple is attacking Android so ferociously.Let’s start with the first graph. Based on Apple’s recent quarterly results, it shows where, exactly, Apple’s revenue is coming from. It’s not iPods, it’s not iTunes, it’s not even Macs; no, 68% of Apple’s revenue in the past quarter has come from the iPhone (47%) and the iPad (21%). For a company that has been a computer manufacturer most of its life, this is pretty amazing.
The second graph is entirely different. It comes from IMS Research (found at Ars Technica), and shows the growth in smartphone market share for several companies, comparing the first quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011. Samsung saw its smartphone marketshare skyrocket from 3% to 13%, a staggering 300% rise. HTC jumped from 6% to 10%. Nokia dropped like a brick from 40% to 24%. Apple went from 16% to 19%.
Now, look at these two graphs, and tell me if you’re still not sure why Apple is suing the living daylights out of Samsung and HTC. Now that the iPhone accounts for almost half of Apple’s revenue, did you really think they were just going to sit idly by as Samsung and HTC eat their lunch with insane growth figures? I said it a few years ago already and the Apple faithful laughed at me in my face – but here are the cold and harsh numbers.
IMS Reseach further notes that the smartphone market is anything but saturated. Smartphones only make up 28% of the total mobile phone market, meaning there’s an enormous amount of potential just sitting there. However, despite all this potential – it’s the Android device makers seeing the insane growth figures, and not Apple. For a company which relies on the smartphone market for almost 50% of its revenue, that must be one scary realisation.
Of course, this isn’t the entire story; the iPad is doing great, accounting for 21% of Apple’s revenue, and there’s little indication that Android tablets today pose much of a threat. However, the situation was the same with Android smartphones only 18-24 months ago. They were laughed away as geek toys no normal person would buy. Look how that turned out. Give it a few years – maybe even less – and we’ll be sitting here all over again.
These graphs illustrate what I mean when I say Apple is afraid of Android. Apple’s biggest revenue-generating machine is under direct attack, and it would seem Apple is unable to turn the tide with just new products alone – so, the age-old mantra comes into play. If you can’t compete, litigate.
July 21, 2011 in Contests
TalkAndroid has a new contest. From their site:
“Who doesn’t want some more storage space in their Android device? More room for pics, movies, music… it all sounds wonderful. But who’s got the extra money to spend? That’s where we come in. We want, nay – need to give away a class 16 GB class 4 micro SD card from Mushkin to someone. The tension is killing us! How do you enter? Simple – Head over to our contest thread in the forums, make sure you have a user account, and give us the most hilarious caption you can think of for the picture above.
Remember to keep it clean, but keep it awesome! We’ll PM the winner Sunday night to let everyone know who won! You can always enter more than once, so come up with as much hilariousness as you can!”
Source here.
July 16, 2011 in Contests
Viewdle Inc just announced the largest Android developer contest to date. Offering a grand prize of $25,000 to the winner of the contest makes this a must for anyone that wants to try their hand at entering.
This is all based off the idea that face recognition software that is device based rather then cloud based is a good thing and solves any privacy concerned from cloud computing and piracy.
Viewdle’s Chief Product Officer, Jason Mitura said: “Fundamentally, Viewdle’s technology provides much more user control. We’ve been able to harness the processing power on newdevices to run face recognition algorithms on the device at the point of capture, rather than in the cloud or on a server, so that users can decide how their media is being used and shared.”
To get started you, as the developer, will submit up to a 3 paragraph application idea/summary to entry@viewdlecontest.com. You have from today through August 31st to get your submission in. At that time 10 finalists will be selected by a panel of judges, which include Stephen Erickson (@Stericson) and other notable Android influences, and flown for free to Mountain View CA on September 23. Where you will be showcasing your new completed application at the Android Homecoming 2011 FunFrence event.
Just the trip to the event and making it in the top 10 is a feat in it self. This contest is a world wide call for application developers, which means your competition will be stiff, but worth the end result. Lets say you don’t cash in big an win the $25,000 prize. That’s OK, The top 4 will each receive a new 10″ Honeycomb tablet AND the latest HTC Android device currently available. Viewdle inc didn’t stop there though. All 10 contestants will continue to consult with Viewdle after the event to help foster and refine their ideas to create a market ready application.
Mitura added: ““This will be the first worldwide computer vision contest for mobile devices – the possibilities are endless. We’re extremely excited to work with TheDroidGuy to bring our tech to the Android community and can’t wait to see what apps the developers design and present.”
This should be a very interesting contest. Viewdle already has a few applications available in the market, such as ThirdEye andViewdle SocialCamera. Both of which take advantage of their facial recognition software. You guys should check them out.
I suggest you quit reading this article now and get to thinking about how you can win that grand prize! We all look forward to seeing what our talented developers can create. Good luck to you all.
July 8, 2011 in Contests
On the Android Central site a new contest is announced, unfortunately for US only. Excerpt from the announce posted there:
“What could be better than the possibility of winning one of the hottest phones of the summer? How about two free phones? We’re giving away not one but two Sprint HTC EVO 3D’s, with some help from the folks at Sprint and TeleNav, whose TeleNav GPS Navigator app comes preloaded on the EVO 3D and is FREE for Sprint subscribers.”
If you’re in US and feeling lucky, follow this link to get the details about how to enter into the competition.
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