developer - 2/11 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Mar

HTC Announces One Developer Edition For The US

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Development, HTC, News, One

In a post to its official blog today, HTC asked developers "what could better than the HTC One," quickly following up with the answer: the same phone. Okay, not quite the same phone – this one is shipped with SIM and bootloader unlocked.

Positioning the device as "a modern platform to build and test your apps," HTC reminds potential buyers of the One's Snapdragon 600 processor, 2GB RAM, 64GB on-board storage, HTC's open APIs for low-energy Bluetooth, Infrared, and "more," along with its dual speakers and microphones.

For those wondering, the developer edition will support the following frequencies:

HSPA/WCDMA 850/1900/2100 MHz
GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
LTE 700/850/AWS/1900 MHz

^{Unfortunately, the real Developer Edition won't come with a see-through back}

HTC says the Developer Edition of the new flagship will be available in limited quantities to US customers "when the HTC One is released in the United States," costing interested parties $649 a pop.

Feb

HTC Releases Kernel Source Files For The One SV

Posted by John Thompson in Development, News, One SV

We've got some good news for the open source development community today: HTC has released the kernel source files for the One SV, in 16 different varieties to account for slight differences between carriers and countries.

Although this may not be of immediate interest to consumers, as developers get their hands on the source, it should result in faster and more stable ROMs for the device in the future.

If you want to download the kernel source, which is around 100MB in size, to check it out for yourself, you can download it from the HTC Dev Center.

Source: HTC Dev Center

Feb

Falcon Pro Hits 100K User Token Limit - Another Twitter Client Bites The Dust

Posted by Jeremiah Rice in Applications, News

In case you hadn't heard, back in August of last year Twitter changed the rules for their API, limiting developers to 100,000 individual user tokens for outside apps (or 200% of then-totals, if the app already had more than 100,000 users). To say the change was controversial would be an understatement. Falcon Pro, a favorite among Android Twitter users, has hit the limit. New users cannot log into Twitter via Falcon Pro. That includes those who have already paid for the app and are reinstalling for a new device or ROM.

Falcon Pro was, and technically still is, one of the most popular paid Twitter clients on the platform.

Feb

Developer Chris Lacy Takes Tweet Lanes Open Source

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, Development, News

Last summer, we saw the launch of Tweet Lanes – a beautiful, functional Twitter app that – due to Twitter's reformed API – ceased active development just a few months ago. Today, Chris Lacy has issued a "further update" on the status of development, writing in a post to Google+ "just because I am no longer actively developing Tweet Lanes doesn't mean that development of the app has to stop."

Yes, after "countless requests" to do so (and an offer to sell), Lacy has taken the project open source – opening up the TL client itself, its SocialNetLib library, and its associated AppEngine project.

Feb

[Developer Changelog] Here's What's New In Android 4.2.2 (JDQ39)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Android OS, Development, Galaxy Nexus, Jelly Bean 4.2, News, Nexus 10, Nexus 4, Nexus 7

Following yesterday's Android 4.2.2 OTAs to various Nexus devices, Google today followed up with the push of all 4.2.2 open source code changes to AOSP. There is a lot here to parse through this time around compared to the minor 4.2.1_r1.2 commit from 10 days ago.

We've already identified some obvious user-facing changes, which we'll post about separately soon to keep it clean and organized. The purpose of this post is, as before, to find the low-level changes that may not be obvious. So move the beard out of the way and dig in.

Update: Ron detailed some new things here: New Android 4.2.2 Features: Toggle From Quick Settings, Better App Download Notifications, and Some New Sounds!

Feb

[Open Letter] Please Help Yourself To Helping Yourself - Why Google Needs To Rethink The Concept Of Developer Support

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Editorials, Google

Last Updated: March 29th, 2013

The following is a guest post and an open letter to Google from Simply Applied, the makers of apps Sign and CritiCall. It was written by Chris H and Peter V, the developers on the Simply Applied team.

To put it plainly, Google’s Developer Support is awful. It’s entirely faceless, avoiding human contact like a recluse living under Uluru in the Australian Outback – its almost enough to long for the days of, “Press 1 for Billing” phone menus. “Developer Support” relies almost entirely on you helping yourself and if something goes wrong in the process you’re forced into a near insanity-inducing endless cycle of self-help.

Jan

Developer Economics 2013 Report: Devs Want A Third Platform, Tablets Nearly As Important As Phones

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in News

The Developer Economics 2013 report—a sort of State of the Union on app development—is out and it's packed with helpful tidbits, both for armchair analysts and programmers trying to make some sense out of this crazy software world. One of the most interesting observations the survey showed is there is still demand for a third platform. And right now they're getting it in a surprising place: on Blackberries.

Above is the graph of OSes that developers list as their "main" platform. That is not to say that any of them code exclusively for them, just that it is the primary target for attention.

Jan

Ouya Announces CREATE, A 10-Day Game Development Competition With $45k In Prizes

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

Time to grab the closest energy drink, sit down at your biggest, baddest, multi-monitoriest coding rig and get cracking on some game ideas, devs! Ouya has announced a 10-day competition that will challenge contestants to come up with an Ouya-compatible app from scratch. The shindig gets started on January 14th and from that point, participants will have until January 23rd to submit a playable demo of their original game.

The contest is being put on in partnership with Kill Screen, which will be reviewing the entries. After the initial reviews, some entrants (not all) will even be played by a "team of industry pros" that includes Ed Fries (co-creator of the Xbox) and Felicia Day (no intro needed).

Dec

Ouya Dev Consoles Have Finished Shipping, Company Teases UI And Unboxing Video

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

As we close out 2012 and move into the new year, all of the tech world is eagerly awaiting the arrival of one, unique product with bated breath and eager curiosity: Google Glass. But for those of us who don't have $1500 to shell out on prototypes of that thing (and a time machine to travel back to I/O '12 to order them), we're distracting ourselves with Ouya, the Android-based gaming console. As of right now, the company behind the platform has finished shipping 1,200 developer units out.

As a teaser for the rest of us, the company has also released the above unboxing video.

Dec

Google: Developers Can Now Localize Promotional Graphics In The Play Store

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

As Google continues the work of expanding its Play Store services across the globe, it only makes sense that the giant is also working to provide a cohesive, pleasant experience for users in the 130+ countries that now support paid apps. To that end, Google has announced in a post to the Android Developers blog that developers can now include localized promotional graphics and video in their Play Store listings.

Basically, what this means is that developers can upload separate assets to ensure that users in, for example, the United States will see English-language graphics and video, while others around the world see materials in their own language.