

Android 2.2 and developers goodies - mcantelon
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/android-22-and-developers-goodies.html

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mark_h
There's an "update all" option (providing permissions haven't changed) in the
market now -- that should quell a few complaints!

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dminor
> Applications can now request installation on the shared external storage
> (such as an SD card).

Finally! Maybe now some of the devices stuck at 1.5 and 1.6 will be able to
get an official upgrade.

~~~
glhaynes
I don't understand why applications should specify where they get installed.
Shouldn't that be something handled by the system, possibly with guidance from
the user?

Does your post imply that this feature will help some of the 1.5/1.6 devices
be upgradeable to 2.x or is that unrelated?

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starnix17
I'm guessing application developers could pick because many of them are
paranoid with piracy.

Since Android is much more open than Android once you have an application file
you can easily share it.

~~~
glhaynes
So since the file system is open, couldn't you still trivially get to the
files and move them to the SD card or FTP them to a friend? Is this really
much of a barrier?

~~~
mbrubeck
Unless you have root on your phone (you don't on most phones unless you
exploit a security hole) then you can't access files owned by applications.

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runevault
Now they just need to release FroYo for phones other than the Nexus One,
Droid, and at some point EVO.

I want it for my MyTouch, so I can finally have all the new goodies :(

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Please yell at your carrier. If Google had their way, every phone would
already be on Android 2.1, but unfortunately carriers and manufacturers are
still demanding to be in control of what firmware gets pushed to "their"
devices.

~~~
jsz0
Yell at Google too. They're the ones who opted to give that control to the
carriers/handset makers.

~~~
abrahamsen
Retaining central control over usage does not match with releasing the code
under an open source license.

~~~
wmf
Google does exercise control over many Android phones
([http://mobilespoon.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-google-
exper...](http://mobilespoon.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-google-
experience.html)), so it wouldn't be a stretch to mandate OS upgrades.

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anigbrowl
Am I being stupid, or does the SDK not contain the hardware update? I've spent
an hour digging around in the apparently false hope that I would be able to
update my N1 today :-)

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Nope. Android SDK updates have never yet (to my knowledge) contained updates
for real live phones. The SDK is released, but Android 2.2 isn't out for any
phones yet. Which makes sense when you think about it. Dev's _should_ have at
least a little time to test their apps under 2.2 in the emulator _before_ 2.2
starts rolling out to phones.

On the Google developers blog, it does say:

"As I said at the beginning, Android 2.2 will be here soon, and some devices
will get the update in the coming weeks. I invite application developers to
download the new SDK and tools and test your applications today."

so hopefully that means we won't have long to wait?

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paulsmith
I'm interested in the fact that the new Android browser runs the V8 JavaScript
interpreter, which is a C++ program with an x86 JIT, so they must have ported
or completely rewrote it from the ground-up for Java and the Dalvik VM.

~~~
Tichy
There is also a native interface for Android, maybe they were able to use
that.

~~~
mbrubeck
The NDK is only needed for including native ARM code in Android packages (APK
files).

The Android kernel and system libraries have always been native code. This
includes Dalvik itself, and WebKit and V8 (or JavaScriptCore), and many other
libraries like SQLite, Speex, BlueZ, BSDiff, and zlib. They are installed
directly on the system partition, not in APK files, and this has been true
since before the NDK existed.

The "Browser" app is an activity written in Java, but it uses the Android
WebView API to embed WebKit, which is written in C++. The Java code handles
the browser "chrome" - menus, toolbars, everything except the page content.
(This is similar to Firefox which uses the C++ Gecko engine with
JavaScript/XUL chrome.)

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stephenjudkins
They definitely had to port the parts that generate x86 bytecode to generate
ARM bytecode instead, but they almost certainly used the Android NDK
(<http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html>) since V8 is written in
C++.

It seems a JavaScript VM is the very definition of "perfomance-critical".

