dalvik - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

May

[For Developers] Smali / Baksmali Updated v2.0 Beta Is Out, Now Multithreaded For Your Pleasure

Posted by Cody Toombs in Development, News

If you're in the modding and theming community, your work is about to get a bit faster, because Smali v2.0 is now in beta and firing on all cylinders. The new version brings multithreaded processing and a few tweaks to the language that should result in cleaner-looking code.

Smali and baksmali are tools for assembling and disassembling the dex format used in Android apks. It's true that tools like this can be used for less than honorable endeavors, but they are also incredibly important to activities like deodexing apps for custom themes, tweaking functionality (like forcing portrait or landscape mode), and even digging around to learn more about various apps.

Jan

For Developers: JEB Is A Powerful New Decompiler For Android Apps, But It's Not Cheap

Posted by Justin Case in Development, News

This week, we saw a new kid among Android decompilers hit the street - JEB. JEB is a full featured, commercial dalvik decompiler aimed at security researchers and reverse engineers. Although many other decompilers exist, such as DED, Androguard, baksmali, dex2jar, undx, etc and most of them are free and work quite well, JEB comes with features not seen in most free tools:

Easy to use UI
Direct dalvik to java decompilation
Easy on the eyes bytecode
Easy cross referencing of items
Easy renaming of items
Inspection

The downside is mainly the price, weighing in at a hefty $1000.

Oct

Myriad Looks To Brings Android Apps To The iPad With Alien Dalvik 2.0

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Android OS, News

Last Updated: August 2nd, 2012

Myriad is continuing their quest to make Android apps run on just about everything with the release of Alien Dalvik 2.0. The latest operation system in their crosshairs is none other than iOS -- specifically the iPad branch of iOS. That's right, Android apps on an iPad.

I can sense your skepticism over the internet (it's a new WordPress plugin) so perhaps some background info will make this a little more believable: Myriad is a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, a Google-assembled group of companies that support Android. They aren't some no-name company. This isn't their first time porting Android to where it doesn't belong; the previous version of Alien Dalvik got Android apps up and running on MeeGo.

Mar

It's Official: RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Will (Sort Of) Support Android Apps

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Android OS, Apps/Games, News

Some combinations are as natural as peanut butter and jelly - Avatar & 3D, Apple & dictatorship, and Conan O'Brien & late-night comedy, to name a few. But are Android apps and the BlackBerry PlayBook also such a sweet match? If you ask RIM, the answer is a firm, definitive "yes."

The BlackBerry maker just confirmed the age-old rumors - it's announced that the upcoming QNX-based PlayBook tablet will support Android apps. There are, however, certain limitations - while the process doesn't sound overly complicated, developers of existing Android apps will need to put some work in to porting their software over, namely "repackaging, code signing, and submitting" it to the BlackBerry App World.

Feb

RIM's Upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Rumored To Support Android Apps, Again

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Android OS, News

About 2 weeks ago, BGR broke the rumor of RIM's upcoming tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, possibly being capable of running Android apps sometime after launch, which the latest rumors put at the end of March/beginning of April with a price sticker of $499.99. The company was seriously looking into this possibility and was trying to decide whether using the Dalvik virtual machine (the same one Android uses to run its apps) was a viable way to move forward. BGR is usually very credible, so the rumor definitely had legs.

Today, 2 weeks later, Bloomberg revealed that their own sources - in fact, 3 of them - have confirmed that RIM is indeed moving in the direction BGR predicted.

Feb

"Alien Dalvik" Brings Android Apps To MeeGo And All Other Devices

Posted by Abhiroop Basu in Android OS, Apps/Games, News

Zurich-based mobile software developer Myriad Group has announced the launch of "Alien Dalvik", an emulator which will enable unmodified Android apps to run on devices not using the Android OS.

App stores will be able to add Android apps to their repositories and they will be able to use Alien Dalvik to simply repackage the Android Package (APK) files for any device. Myriad promises that the repackaged Android app will run seamlessly and can be installed and uninstalled like any other native app. This is of course a lofty claim, which will have to be tested in real world scenarios. However, the video shows that Alien Dalvik works quite well on a Nokia N900, running MeeGo.

Oct

Google Gets Sued Over Android And Java Yet Again, This Time By Gemalto

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in HTC, Motorola, News, Samsung

As if Oracle's, Microsoft's, and Apple's [1] [2] suits weren't giving Android enough headache, today, Gemalto, an Amsterdam-based digital security company, added some fuel to the flames by filing a patent infringement suit against Google and its partners HTC, Samsung, and Motorola. The suit claimed that Android and the Dalvik operating environment incorporated Gemalto's patented Java Card technology without the company's permission.

The Wall Street Journal explained in more detail:

According to the complaint on the website of the U.S. law firm hired by Gemalto, McKool Smith, the Java Card Technology enables Java applications and applications developed in other high level programming languages to run on resource-constrained devices such as smart cards and mobile phones.

Aug

Google To Oracle: We'll Fight For Android

Posted by David Ruddock in News

Them’s Fightin’ Words

As you may have heard, Oracle (who now own Sun and the Java programming language) filed a patent infringement suit against Google related to the use of Java on the Android platform (particularly in the Dalvik VM, details on TechCrunch if you’re interested). Google has responded to Oracle’s suit, and they are ready to make a stand:

We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit. The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform.