Google Releases Android Program For Download
This week Google has released the new programming tools for the Android mobile phone alliance for download. This will give developers the ability to start writing personal software for their phones.
The software development kit (SDK), an open-source package available for download for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X machines, shows that Java is indeed the programming language for software running on the Linux-based phones. Accompanying the SDK is a raft of details that wasn’t available when Google and its partners announced the Open Handset Alliance a week ago.
The Android software includes the Google-created Dalvik virtual machine for running Java programs, the WebKit browser, and support for many media and image file formats. And hardware abilities permitting, it also supports wireless communications using GSM mobile-phone technology, 3G, Edge, 802.11 Wi-Fi networks. Conspicuously missing from the list is the widely used CDMA mobile phone technology developed by Qualcomm.
Google is offering $10 million in prizes - each of them will range from $25,000 to $275,000 - to help the Android program kick off. Android programmers can use the open-source Eclipse programming tool, founded by IBM and now supported by many companies, along with an Android plug-in for Eclipse. The SDK includes an emulator so programmers can write software even without phone hardware. However, as programmer Jason Chen cautions on his blog, “The look and feel of the user interface in the emulator is a placeholder for a final version that is under development.”
The SDK also describes application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable programmers to take advantage of underlying support for location-based services, video and audio streaming and playback, and 3D graphics. However, support for Bluetooth and 802.11 wireless networking APIs isn’t yet available, though they’ll be added to the SDK, the site said.