Comments on: Android The Destroyer

By: Dylan

Dylan — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:14:00 +0000

Another great aspect of Android, when compared to Maemo or iPhone for instance, is the target platform. Maemo is limited to Nokia’s tablet, and obviously, Apple’s SDK (when released) will only target the iPhone. The Android/Open Handset Alliance so far includes LG, Motorola and Samsung. But with the availability of a free software stack like this, running on commodity components, it’s not hard to imagine that this might sprout a number of smaller manufacturers for whom the threshold has been significantly lowered.

By: Jackson

Jackson — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:19:26 +0000

Wow, you actually liked that API?

By: thilo pfennig

thilo pfennig — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:11:00 +0000

I agree. I think that also many services more or less only Google provides help to make the new devices really powerful. So a lot more like just extended mobil phones. And I really dont see anything that comes near to it. The iPhone in relations is rather a gimmick.

By: Karl Lattimer

Karl Lattimer — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:58:09 +0000

I don’t see android killing off QNX any time soon, I mean QNX isn’t generally used for such frivolous things as mobile phones, it is used in things like real time flight control systems for aircraft. I think that is somewhat outside of the scope of android.

In reality I don’t see android killing off any platforms, but it will hopefully be a royal kick up the arse for any current developers of mobile software and that is never a good thing.

Motivation through competition rather than destruction through monopolisation.

By: Martin Sevior

Martin Sevior — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:47:31 +0000

@Anonymous, sugar is not resource constrained for using python. All the time critical apps are native C/C++. As far as I’m aware Android does not have a number of “killer features” required by sugar. eg a pervasive collaborative framework or a high performance rich text widget.

Android doesn’t need them but they’re critical for sugar’s intended application.

By: jcdenton

jcdenton — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:17:05 +0000

How can you even begin to compare Android to QNX?

By: RichB

RichB — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 07:09:00 +0000

@Orph: The custom virtual machine in Android means that “apps required a recompile for Android versus other platforms”. It’s not Java you know. It’s yet another Intermediate Language. Which happens to have an IKVM-like precompiler to take Java bytecode and spit out Dalvik bytecode.

By: orph

orph — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:56:24 +0000

@Gurkola: C++ is low-level meaning apps require a recompile for every phone platform. But ya, I totally agree that Android is big mostly because of Google’s backing.

By: orph

orph — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:49:49 +0000

@Ian: Nice. But I doubt all the platform building happened just to facilitate more of the same kind of browsing. WebKit seems to be the least interesting/new part of this platform so far.

By: Gurkola

Gurkola — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:43:48 +0000

Not only OpenMoko, but to probably to a even higher degree Qtopia is
neither a restrictively closed platforms, nor uses an unfriendly low-level language (as C++/moc/Qt is not that low-level as C anymore), it does scale to support 3D and it is possible to do iPhone-quality animations, it has a useful widget reuse and it allows replacing core components (it’s nearly as easy as with Android), etc etc..

So I see the potential in Android but that’s mainly due to the fact, that Google is behind it. Given the fact they throw out 10 million bucks for attracting developers beats alot of “competitors”….

For now it is just a hype with 10 million dollar “community” (*) backing. We have to wait until they really release the source-code for the core components – if they will do this will throw another light on the whole project….

(*) With that financial incentive there will be *only* closed source competition as any open source project would imply might loosing the chance to get 250k dollar – atleast until the final winner is determined.