News app

Google Currents: This is one of my favorite apps for my phone and my Android tablet. The app brings beautiful magazine-like editions to your tablet and smartphone for high speed and offline reading. Editions are all free and include: Forbes, The Guardian, PBS, Saveur and more with in-depth articles, pictures, video and more. Google Currents uses Google search technology to hourly build a set of editions tracking the five most recent trending stories in categories such as world, entertainment, sports, science, and more. Here's the link. From the phone search for "google currents" and install.

Health app

ITriage Health: A very nice app developed by doctors. It provides you with valuable information to help you better understand the medical condition you might have, and also where to get treatment for it. It has a very interesting "Symptom-to-Provider" pathway: search medical symptoms, learn about potential causes, and then be directed to the most appropriate health care treatment facility or doctor. It allows access to thousands of medical symptoms, diseases, procedures, and medications. It also has step by step directions to the medical facilities close to your location. Here's the link. From the phone search for "itriage health" and install. *** And remember: this should not be used for serious medical conditions. That's still your doctor's job.
 

Android Vs Other Platforms & Feature For Android Users.

In the previous article (Why Developing For Android Mobile Devices? Marketer, Developer Perspective.) we discuss why DEVELOP FOR ANDROID also why develop of general mobile platforms from the developer perspective, in this article we will continue explain why you must develop for android from user perspective and  why android different from other platforms and finally will explained the major difference between j2me and IOS and compare them with an android platform.

First of all let us explore the feature that android provide for the end user.

For end users - android user perspective 

- No license fee

- More than 30K application in the market with 61% are free apps

- Supported by dozens of hardware manufacturers

- Low price smart-phone devices

- Abilities to integrate with Google’s services

- Android Takes Lead in US Smartphone Market

- In January 2011, 31.2% of smartphone market, (7.1% in 2010), 30.4% Blackberry, and 24.7% iPhone

For More Details see This article 

What Android Has That Other Platforms Don’t Have

Many of the features listed in the previous article (what is android? Developer applications guide), such as 3D graphics and native database support, are also available in other native mobile SDKs, as well as becoming available on mobile browsers. 

The following non comprehensive list details some of the features available on Android that may not be available on all modern mobile development platforms:

- Google Maps applications 

 The Map View lets you display, manipulate, and annotate a Google Map within your Activities to build map-based applications.

- Background services and applications 

You can create applications based on an event-driven model, working silently while other applications are being used or while your mobile sits ignored until it rings, flashes, or vibrates to get your attention. 

Android provides the same opportunities for all applications and developers.

- Shared data and inter-process communication 

 Using Intents and Content Providers, Android lets your applications exchange messages, perform processing, and share data between other application. 

- All applications are created equal 

Android doesn’t differentiate between native applications and those developed by third parties. This gives consumers unprecedented power to change the look and feel of their devices by letting them completely replace every native application with a third-party alternative that has access to the same underlying data and hardware.

- Wi-Fi Direct and Android Beam

Using these innovative new inter-device communication APIs, you can include features such as instant media sharing and streaming. 

- Home-screen Widgets, Live Wallpaper, and the quick search box 

 Using Widgets and Live Wallpaper, you can create windows into your application from the phone’s home screen.  

The quick search box lets you integrate search results from your application directly into the phone’s search functionality.

Android vs. J2ME

- Multiple device configurations

- J2ME has 2 classes of micro devices

- Android offers only one

- Ease of understanding

- J2ME has multiple UI model (MIDlets, Xlets, AWT, Swing …)

- Android support for only one, so it would be more easier to understandthan J2ME

- Responsiveness

- Dalvik VM vs. JVM

- Dalvik VM vs. KVM

- Java compatibility

- Android runs .dex bytecode

- Runtime interpretation of Java bytecode is not possible

- Adoption

- Most of mobile phone support for J2ME

- But uniformity, cost, ease of development in Android are the reasons for java developer to program for it

- Java SE support

- Android support for J2SE more complete than J2ME CDC (except AWT & Swing)

Apple vs. Android

- Games 52.2% of app sales in 2010

- 350K apps in iStore, 130K in Android market - 294K in may .

 - Android easiest to write for Tools plus getting published

-  Fragmented hardware

Why Developing For Android Mobile Devices? Marketer, Developer Perspective.

WHY DEVELOP FOR MOBILE?

In market terms, the development of modern mobile Smartphones multifunction devices including a phone but featuring a full featured web browser, cameras, media players, WI-Fi, and location-based services have fundamentally changed the way people interact with their mobile devices and access the Internet which increasing the development trends for  Developing Android Mobile application for a lot of devices.

-  More than 3 billion mobile phone users around the worldwide and many developers.

- 2009 marked the year that more people accessed the Internet for the first time from a mobile phone rather than a PC.

- Access the Internet by mobile phone like android and IOS devices will increase than using personal computers.

- High-speed mobile data and WI-Fi hotspots, has created a huge opportunity for advanced mobile applications.

- Smartphone applications have changed the way people use their phones. This gives you, the application developer a unique opportunity to create dynamic, compelling new applications that become a vital part of people’s lives.

WHY DEVELOP FOR ANDROID?

The first question that every developer is asking himself, before learning, or take training about new technology or spending a time to search a resources is why develop for Android? Why Android platforms and not any other platforms? I'm going to show you the answer of this question into those reasons in this Blog.

From Developer perspective 

ANDROID MARKET SHARE

- The number of Android phones sold every day is larger than that of any other mobile phone operating system (at least in the United States and Europe). Moreover the number of Android phones sold in those regions keeps growing, so after applying some simplest math skills, it becomes evident that unless something extraordinary happens we can clearly say that Android is the platform that's going to have the most users in the future, maybe it will even become a standard for all phones. And that means that you will have more people who can buy or use your product also more developer for Android OS. 

-  Android represents a clean break, a mobile framework based on the reality of modern mobile devices designed by developers, for developers.

-  Simple, powerful, and open SDK which include all tools for the Android mobile developer.

 - Licensing fees except Google market account 25$ for ever.

 - Very good and excellent documentation.

- Huge developer community, Android represents an opportunity to create software that changes how and why people use their mobile phones.

- No certification is required to become an Android developer.

- Google Play provides free, up-front purchase, and in-app billing options for distribution and monetization of your applications.

- There is no approval process for application distribution.  Developers have total control over their brands.

- More than 850,000 new Android devices are activated daily, with many studies showing the largest proportion of new Smartphone sales belonging to Android devices.

As of March 2012, Google Play (formerly Android Market) has expanded its support for application sales to 131 countries, supporting more than 10 billion installs at a growth rate of 1 billion downloads per month.

- JAVA PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 

Apple products, like the iPhone, use Objective C (all developer talk is complicated language when compares it with other common language) that was invented by Apple. However if you want to develop apps for Android the only thing that you need to know is Java and Android API for Java. Unlike Objective C, Java is a very powerful programming language that has been around for 15 years and thus has millions of pages of articles about it, tutorials, books, courses, learning materials, also very powerful integrated with oracle products etc. As well as a lot of professionals who have experience working with Java and a lot of libraries and other kinds of enhancements. And besides that - the experience that you get from programming for Android you might also use in a lot of other fields.

Remember : Java is the android programming language which needs it to build our applications .

Publishing the app to the Market (Google play ) .

Google offers the Google Play service in which programmers can offer their Android application to Android users. Google phones include the Google Play application which allows installing applications.

Google Play also offers an update service, e.g. If android developer uploads a new version of his application to Google Play, this service will notify existing users that an update is available and allow to install it.

Google Play used to be called Android Market.

To be able to publish the app on the google play you need the following

- Requires Google Developer Account

- $25 fee

- Link to a Merchant Account

- Google Checkout

- Link to your checking account

-  Google gets 30% you get 70% .

What is Android? Developer Applications Guide

How to develop Android applications ? First You need What is Android?

Google’s Andy Rubin describes Android as: 

The first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices, all of the software to run a mobile phone but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.

What I need For developing Android Application? 

To develop Android applications  you needs the following thing :

First of All , you must Know  a Few  about Android operating system which is based on Linux with a Java programming interface.   [ So You must Know Java Programming To write the Android App] .

All Android applications written in Java and converted to the Dalvik executable .dex

Second : you need (Android SDK)  Software Development Kit  .

The SDK provides all necessary tools to develop Android applications also The Android SDK provides you the API libraries  and developer tools necessary to build, test, and debug apps for Android.

We will discuss all tools later step by step which we needed to develop application , but now just keep in mind you need know Java [ if you not java developer , don't worry about it ] and install The SDK .

Features of Android

Storage

Uses SQLite, a lightweight relational database, for data storage

Connectivity

Supports GSM/EDGE, IDEN, CDMA, EV-DO, UMTS, Bluetooth includes A2DP and AVRCP, WiFi, LTE, and WiMAX

Messaging

Supports both SMS and MMS

Web browser

Based on the open-source WebKit, together with Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine

Media support

Includes support for the following media: H.263, H.264 (in 3GP or MP4

Container), MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB (in 3GP container), AAC, HE-AAC (in

MP4 or 3GP container), MP3, MIDI, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, and

BMP)

Hardware support

Accelerometer Sensor, Camera, Digital Compass, Proximity Sensor, and GPS

Multi-touch

Supports multi-touch screens

Multitasking

Supports multi-tasking applications

Flash support

Android 2.3 supports Flash 10.1

Tethering

Supports sharing of Internet connections as a wired/wireless hotspot

Security

Android is a multi-process system, in which each application (and parts of the system) runs in its own process. Most security between applications and the system is enforced at the process level through standard Linux facilities, such as user and group IDs that are assigned to applications.  On the other word the Android system will create a unique user and group ID for every Android application. Each application file is private to this generated user, e.g. other applications cannot access these files. 

Additional finer-grained security features are provided through a "permission" mechanism that enforces restrictions on the specific operations that a particular process can perform, and per-URI permissions for granting ad-hoc access to specific pieces of data.

The Android market

Google Play - Android Market  .

Google offers the Google Play service in which programmers (Android Developer) can offer their Android application to Android users. Google phones include the Google Play application which allows to install applications.

Google Play also offers an update service, e.g. if a programmer (Android Developer) uploads a new version of his application to Google Play, this service will notify existing users that an update is available and allow to install it. 

Other Feature For Android Market

- Google Market - Part of GMS Apps .

- 3party apps submitted to Google, approved and distributed through the market.

- Both Free and Paid apps.

- Apps now limited to 50 MB; updates possible through Market Monetization through ads available.

- Available in many countries, not all countries have support for paid apps.

- Other Marketplace applications available – Amazon has announced its own Android Marketplace.

- App searches filtered based on Manifest file - eg. if a device does not have trackball, apps using trackball will be filtered out.

- Every app publishes a list of components the app will access and permissions need to be granted before installation.  

- Apps installed on device and SD card - SD Card from Froyo.

Future possibilities :

- Google Android Sales to Overtake iPhone in 2012

- The OHA is committed to making their vision a reality: to deploy the Android platform for every mobile operator, handset manufacturers and developers to build innovative devices

- Intel doesn’t want to lose ownership of the notebook market, so they need to prepare for anything, including Android

- Fujitsu launched an initiative to offer consulting and engineering expertise to help run Android on embedded hardware, which aside from cell phones, mobile internet devices, and portable media players, could include GPS devices, thin-client computers and set-top boxes.

- More Android devices are coming and some will push the envelope even further .

Game

Flow Free: Another nice looking and very popular game. The objective of the game is to connect matching colors with pipes to create a flow. Pair all colors, and cover the entire board to solve each puzzle in Flow Free. But watch out, pipes will break if they cross or overlap! The game has 600  puzzles, with free play or time trial mode. The more you play the harder the game gets. Here's the link. From the phone search for "flow free" and install.

Relaxation app

Relax and sleep: If you have trouble falling asleep, like me, this app might help you. It has over 35 preset ambient sounds, created to help you sleep. Some of the sounds are:  thunder, stopwatch, white noise, ocean, sea, birds, rain, crickets, frogs, water, mechanical noises, nature... and many more. Some of the features included are: custom presets, countdown counter, alarm clock, fade out and more. Here's the link. From the phone search for "relax and sleep" and install. Sleep tight!