Android 3.0 Platform Preview and Updated SDK Tools
android-developers.blogspot.com
android-developers.blogspot.com
High-performance 2D and 3D graphics: A new property-based animation framework lets developers add great visual effects to their apps. A built-in GL renderer lets developers request hardware-acceleration of common 2D rendering operations in their apps, across the entire app or only in specific activities or views. For adding rich 3D scenes, developers take advantage of a new 3D graphics engine called Renderscript.
This ought to do a lot of good for smoothness and sleek animations. The selection ability is also great - looks like Apps can selectively enable hardware acceleration based on their needs and underlying hardware capabilities.
Support for multicore processor architectures: Android 3.0 is optimized to run on either single- or dual-core processors, so that applications run with the best possible performance.
Would be great to know what they did to optimize it for dual core - may be some parallel GC tweaks, and some API additions for task bindings etc.
Rich multimedia: New multimedia features such as HTTP Live streaming support, a pluggable DRM framework, and easy media file transfer through MTP/PTP, give developers new ways to bring rich content to users.
DRM - NetFlix can finally shut up! I am not unhappy as it is pluggable - if I don't want it I won't install the plug.
Enhancements for enterprise: New administrative policies, such as for encrypted storage and password expiration, help enterprise administrators manage devices more effectively.
Encrypted storage is too little too late unless I am misunderstanding it - this looks like it's limited to storing Exchange data only, and not system wide encryption. But they are going somewhere with it which is good.
Pluggable does not mean "as a plugin". As a user, you won't be given any choice in the matter (short of not installing the application at all of course).
There is no "DRM plug". "Pluggable DRM framework" means Google just provides an architecture to implement their actual DRM, instead of forcing developers to use Google's own DRMs. Nothing more, nothing less. Your declarations hardly make sense.
All I am saying is it would still be possible for me to buy a Android device whose maker doesn't implement any DRM at all. Or do you happen to know something that I don't and Google is planning to provide a default mandatory DRM for Android that everyone must carry?
Assuming you can find one that satisfies your requirement. Wanna bet? Hint: DRM is part of newer ARM designs.
No. APKs are DRM-protected.
Does this mean that 3.0 is not going to ship on phones? I haven't seen it demoed on phones at all.
My guess is that iOS 3.2 for the iPad was a fork of an earlier version of iOS, worked on by a separate group of people than those that were working on iOS 4.0 for the iPhone[1]. The split was because it took a few months for it to all be merged back together in a stable way, not for any big strategic reason.
1. Remember, the iPad was a big secret - even within Apple.
Aside from secrecy, there are other reasons (like product schedules) that Honeycomb may have been developed on a branch, concurrent with Gingerbread development. Previous releases like Cupcake and Donut were developed on long-lived branches, with frequent merges from the AOSP mainline. The end result could be the same, even if the rationale is slightly different.
I get the impression that Honeycomb isn't going to be coming to phones. Why Google is doing this is anyone's guess. Things that are deeply important, like graphics acceleration, needs to filter down very quickly, but it looks like Google are solely focused on tablets.
It's a really schizophrenic strategy, and I'm beginning to get the impression no-one is really in charge there. Why does the Nexus One still not have 2.3? Why are features that were slated for 2.3 now in 3.0, which doesn't even look like it's coming to phones?
Google certainly aren't doing well at pleasing their current customers, and they've certainly scared me away. I don't see why I should trust anything about their upgrade path. The argument that you buy a handset for what it does, rather than what it promises, is flimsy, but when you sell phones like the Nexus One, and specifically promise upgrades, you're just lying.
EDIT: To those commenting about iOS 3.2, the difference is that iOS 3.2 didn't really deliver any large features that meant iPhone didn't maintain parity. Honeycomb, with graphics acceleration, overhauled UI etc. etc. will. Apple's strategy was always a unified one, with a little detour to get it going on tablets. Google appear to have completely switched tack.
It's the same strategy that virtually every maker is following now. It's building out a platform, and its what you have to do to compete now.
I get the impression that Honeycomb isn't going to be coming to phones.
Their introductory video specifically says "built entirely for tablets". I don't know what the credibility of it is, but there was the rumor that the next iteration will be 2.4 and will be for handsets. Such a versioning strategy makes sense.
Obviously they would share considerable amounts of code. The "shell" is just a replaceable process.
Google certainly aren't doing well at pleasing their current customers
It's clear that Google and its open handset partnership is perilously understaffed right now, and they need to cut the umbilical going to whoever is screwing up this opportunity.
Android, I think, succeeded far beyond Google's dreams (originally tablets and PMPs were a no-go, but they've become a primary focus), but it seems to be moving far too slowly. A bunch of stuff they promised for 2.2 still isn't there in 2.3, and is only rumored for 3.0. They need to seriously pick up the pace.
Except for the part where 2.4 comes after 3.0...
And at 4.0 they would likely merge.
Google may have a similar strategy in the works. 3.0 will be tablet-only, then some future version will consolidate things. Since they're not as secretive as Apple there may not be as long a break while things are integrated properly.
That said it'd still be nice to hear about such a strategy if it exists.
There's mention of it (multipane UIs) here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-3.0-highlights.html...
1. http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/07/exclusive-interview-googl...
Not sure yet how well that theme will go over. When the Sense UI came out it was certainly more flashy and pretty than the stock UI, but at a major cost to battery life. Hopefully holographic has mitigated some of this.
It'll be interesting to see their UI builder in action once they finalize it. One of the larger gripes I've heard from iOS developers turned android is the lack of decent/fast UI construction tools.
(I’m also personally not a fan of the aesthetics but the iPad’s frequent kitschyness is in my eyes in a different way but equally ugly.)
I was just at a wireless store last night and their one in-store device would only run 1.6.
Their sold out device was only 2.1
The next device was still 2.1, "hopefully" 2.2
I asked if I could update, they said it wasn't possible and they didn't know for sure when it would be.
As a developer, what am I supposed to do here? Develop for 2.2 and 3.0 and just wait it out? Nope. I still have to make my games compatible with 1.6 if I want to reach the majority of the market.
1. http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...
I think Google is doing a fantastic job keeping users up to date, much better than most OS vendors out there.
Quite a lot are probably using it because their hardware is just not supported on new versions of Windows. The Vista change in driver model basically meant a huge amount of old hardware became useless. Another bunch of them are using it because they don't want to pay for a new version of Windows, which is prohibitively expensive to buy "off the shelf". So they "cannot" afford to. And another fraction cannot upgrade because their computer is just too slow or doesn't have the RAM to run newer versions. And another fraction have older software that isn't compatible or is not supported on newer versions of Windows (the reason most corporate and business customers are probably stuck there).
So actually I think quite a lot of Windows users are "stuck" on older versions, and in many ways they are worse off than Android users because there is not thriving community of Windows ROM developers making free upgrades.
EDIT: still no better. sun-java6-jdk is in the Ubuntu partner repo for maverick now though
This is what the docs say:
About emulator performance
Because the Android emulator must simulate the ARM instruction set architecture on your computer and the WXGA screen is significantly larger than what the emulator normally handles, emulator performance is much slower than usual.
In particular, initializing the emulator can be slow and can take several minutes, depending on your hardware. When the emulator is booting there is limited user feedback, so please be patient and continue waiting until you see the home screen appear.
We're working hard to resolve the performance issues in the emulator and it will improve in future releases. In the meantime, we wanted to give developers access to new APIs and an basic test environment as early as possible.
Keeping in mind that performance on the emulator does not reflect the speed or performance of apps on actual devices running Android 3.0, developing and testing on the emulator is still an important tool in evaluating your application's appearance and functionality on the new platform.