Thursday, October 21, 2010

Android on freerunner

Today I installed android on the freerunner. It is very straightforward thanks to the work of the guys at http://code.google.com/p/android-on-freerunner/. It is just a matter of copying the code to the SD and then just starting the machine. After doing so, I installed the eclipse plugin for developing android apps. It works surprisingly smoothly and I could run the tests and even some small apps of mine. We also tested phonegap with a friend. He tested it in symbian/nokia5800 and I tested it in android/freerunner. We were expecting a lot from the API, but in the end, it didn't run quite as good as expected: unresponsive buttons and some problems with the accelerometer. I think it may be due to the emphasis in Iphone that the developers have put to it. It still looks good as a library, we're gonna study the code to see why it didn't work. I also found that the freerunner discharges (even when plugged in to the usb) when it is connected to the WiFi (an android/freerunner bug?). Then I started to think about android and the hundreds of companies that are about to use it in their phones and I can't but worry about the possibility of the Java license infringement claim made by Oracle. If they succeed in their claim, that could mean bankruptcy for many companies. Anyways, after this exercise I consider QT and Android as very good development environments for mobiles. Nokia should not abandon Symbian and QT because they complete the landscape in mobile-development and give us good choices and tools.

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