Last week, an update to Google's much-anticipated Android mobile development platform's SDK was released.
Google released an updated SDK last Wednesday that offers updgraded support for media and improved user interface
Highlights for new SDK from Android blog:
Link to Android highlights
* 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
Android as with many Google-ized acquisitions is destined to make an impressive splash but its initial impact may be blunted by lack of carrier adoption. Neither dominant players AT&T or Verizon have announced plans to support Android which will leave T-Mobile and Sprint and a host of secondary carriers who have greenlighted the mobile development platform.
At last count, there are more 3.3 billion mobile accounts worldwide (source: Network World); the prospect of having a Google-powered open source toolset for mobile development is intriguing at the very least.
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Watch the Android intro video:
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