
Android soon to be able to distribute Python apps as .APKs - iamelgringo
http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/cl5q5/android_soon_to_be_able_to_distribute_python_apps/
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v_
ASE is awesome, but it doesn't expose the full android API to python scripts.
<http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/wiki/ApiReference> is what you get
currently, though this list seems to be growing pretty quickly.

~~~
est
Google Apps Scripts is also awesome!

<http://www.google.com/google-d-s/scripts/scripts.html>

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spicyj
Project #6 for the Ruby Summer of Code is getting JRuby apps on Android to
work:

<http://rubysoc.org/projects>

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jamesbritt
You can do some sick stuff right now: Ruboto On Acid

<http://jay.mcgavren.com/blog/archives/1419>

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sprout
I've been really happy ever since I installed Python on my Droid. It's really
fun to show off how you can access text-to-speech with droid.speak().

I'm not sure I buy it will be useful for development without a custom VM, but
I have the full power of a 500 mhz (ish) processor wherever I am.

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moe
Anyone know how scripted apps affect battery life?

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andrewbadera
My first thought as well. Battery life on my Incredible is poor at best as it
is. I don't want to pony up for an oversize battery and wreck the profile, I
need it to fit in a case/holster/mount/etc.

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ZeroGravitas
How fast does battery technology progress? I've replaced a few batteries in
iPods and Nintendo DS's and I'm fairly certain they were rated much higher
than the stock ones, while being surprisingly cheap.

Does it go fast enough to make a material difference between choosing a phone
with or without user accessible batteries and purchasing a newer battery 6 or
12 months later?

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adbge
Interesting, I've never thought about replacing a phone battery with a higher-
end model (can you tell I have an iPhone?) I'm curious as to the actual
battery life gains one would see and the effect on weight , etc.

I must have benchmarks!

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jsz0
From what I've seen extended life batteries for phones tend to be 100-200mAh
larger than stock batteries. So I think that would work out to a ~10%
improvement for most phones. It really depends on the capacity of the OEM
battery. I remember seeing a 2000mAh+ battery for the EVO which would be
nearly a 25% improvement over the stock battery.

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zokier
Just to provide a counterpoint: N900/Maemo has had the ability to have apps
distributed in an arbitrary language since launch, and Nokia seems to
especially like Python, sponsoring the developement of Qt bindings for it etc.

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SingAlong
Now the important question, will it hurt frame rate if games are developed
using Python instead of Java for android?

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dustingetz
a python interface to a lower level rendering library could mitigate most of
that effect.

otoh, serious game writing is pretty hardcore tech, cutting-edge game devs
probably won't jump into python right away.

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chipsy
Python is going to chug even on relatively simple action games. I did write
some 2D stuff in Pygame/SDL and Pygame/OpenGL back in the early-mid 2000s that
could do 30FPS, but to do it was akin to writing in BASIC on an 8-bit; you had
to micro-optimize in a fairly brutal way, one which obscured Python's powers.
Things like rendering a tilemap could get huge speed boosts simply by avoiding
nested loops in favor of a cache. Even using OpenGL wasn't really enough to
secure a comfortable margin of performance.

If I did it again I would have an easier time because I missed a few critical
constructs back then(most notably, the array package). It still wouldn't be
pretty, especially not on a phone.

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openfly
I hope this stuff is executing on top of Dalvik and not via the NDK.

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barredo
Noob here: What about the GUI? How it will be created?

