Thursday, February 14, 2008

Android SDK Update Released by Google

Google released yesterday the updated Android Software Development Kit (SDK). The version is being called "m5-rc14" according to the Hello Android Blog.

For those of you unfamiliar with Android, here's an extract from Google:

"Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. This early look at the Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language."

So basically, a platform, Google branded, that allows you to develop mobile applications and services using Java.

The Hello Android Blog highlighted some of the new Android SDK features:

New user interface: As I mentioned when we introduced the m3 version of the Android SDK, we're continuing to refine the UI that's available for Android. m5-rc14 replaces the previous placeholder with a new UI, but as before, work on it is still in-progress.

Layout animations: Developers can now create layout animations for their applications using the capabilities introduced in the android.view.animation package. Check out the LayoutAnimation*.java files in the APIDemos sample code for examples of how this works.

Geo-coding: android.location.Geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.

New media codecs: The MediaPlayer class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.

Updated Eclipse plug-in: A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience. In particular, check out the new Android Manifest editor.

I'm not a great Java programmer, but I must say that Android seems to be a great development platform in the mobile industry, so pull out your dusty Java books, and jump into it. You might even make something really cool, that will end up in a new cell phone :P