Development - 72/86 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Sep

Now We're Talking - Google's Latest Follow-up To The License Verification Fiasco Showcases 4 Methods To Make Pirates' Jobs Much Harder

Posted by Justin Case in Apps/Games, Development, News

Update: Tim Bray responded in our comments letting us know Trevor Johns, a hands-on guy in the Android back-rooms, was the author of the post.

After we blew the faults behind Google's License Verification Library out of the water last week, Google's Tim Bray promised us some tips for protecting our applications against piracy, and in the latest post at Google's official Android blog he delivered them. Tim's article is loaded with easy to follow sample code, and advice that just makes sense. Mr. Bray covers several protection methods including:

obfuscation,
customizing the Licensing Library,
making your application tamper resistant (with a code sample that is nearly identical to what I published a week ago),
and using a secondary server for added protection.

Aug

First Custom Motorola Droid X ROM Released, Gives (Partial) Finger To eFuse & Motorola

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, Droid X (Shadow), Froyo 2.2, News, Verizon Wireless

Awesome news today on the Droid X front: the first custom ROM for the Droid X has been released by birdman. For anyone not living under a rock, this is a pretty big deal - Motorola was pretty serious about locking down the Droid X, and it's a relief to see that manufacturers can't completely kill the aftermarket.

The ROM seems to be based on the earlier leaked 2.2 ROM, and has only a handful of customizations:

v0.1 includes

OptiPNG optimized apk's

Deodexed

Busybox

Updated Superuser.apk (credits to chainsdd)

Removed
3g hotspot

Kindle (market app)

Blockbuster (bankrupt company)

EMERGENCY (dial 911 for emergency's...dont screw around with an app)

My Verizon (bad market app)

Maps (market app)

Voice search (market app)

Swype (removed for their constant anger towards rom devs)

Skype (market app)

Google search (market app)

The ROM can be downloaded via ROM Manager, and as far as flashing it goes, it looks like you'll need to be rooted and have ClockworkMod Recovery.

Aug

Motorola Charm Rooted Via Universal Androot

Posted by Brian O'Toole in CHARM, Development, News

Good news for the 12 people who have managed to get a Motorola Charm - Universal Androot works perfectly well. For the uninitiated, Universal Androot is exactly what it sounds like: an app that can root a whole slew of Android devices (disclaimer: it doesn't unlock /system on all of them, though). Instructions are pretty simple:

Download the latest version of the program from this XDA post to your computer.

Copy the file to your SD card.

Find and install it with your file browser of choice (I choose Android Mate in the market, or you can use Astro). Don’t forget that this ability is only enabled if you check the Settings > Applications > Unknown sources option.

Aug

CyanogenMod 6.0 Final Released

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Aria (Liberty), Desire (Bravo/BravoC), Development, Dream, Droid (Sholes), EVO 4G (Supersonic), Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), Incredible, myTouch 3G (Magic), News, Nexus One (Passion), Sapphire, Vibrant

Looks like CyanogenMod 6, Android's most popular ROM, has made its way out of the RC's and into final release. I've been running CM6 on my EVO for a little over a month now, and I love it. And as most people know, CM6 now covers a fair number of devices:

Nexus One
Droid
Dream/Sapphire
Hero (GSM/CDMA)
Incredible
Slide
EVO
Galaxy S (Vibrant)
Aria

The above links lead to the CM6 info/download post on CM forums. The devices with no hyperlink don't have CM6 final yet - though they may have experimental builds (for example, the Incredible is on RC3). Heads-up though, it looks like there are a ton of people downloading - I'm getting 23 KBPS right now.

Aug

Root Available For the Epic 4G You Don't Even Have Yet

Posted by David Ruddock in Development, Epic 4G, News

That was quick - the Sprint's Epic 4G has already been rooted by the crew over at SDX-devs. In other words, now you can root that phone you don't have yet. It's a method requiring adb (Android Device Bridge) commands and thus desktop connectivity, but a one-click solution will probably emerge sooner rather than later. Note: it says EVO root, but the method works on this phone as well, don't let the filename fool you. Instructions below:

download this file
http://evo4g.me/downloads/evo-root.zip

run these commands thru adb
adb push c:\downloads\rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin /data/local/tmp
adb shell
chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin
cd /data/local/tmp
./rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin

exit out of the adb shell, and type adb shell again.

Aug

Android Piracy By Country

Posted by Justin Case in Apps/Games, Development

We received an email from David Keyes at KeyesLabs today, with a detailed analysis of piracy in various countries. For those that don't know, David is the author of the battery saving app Screebl, and the open source licensing library AAL. A true pioneer in Android app copy protection.

According to David's data, the often used excuse of "Paid apps are not available in my country" is at least partly bogus. He has customers from countries such as Nigeria, Kuwait, and the Ukraine who have found ways of purchasing apps through the Android Market, without the full market officially being available there.

Aug

Logitech Releases Commercials For Revue - "Creepy" Is An Understatement

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, Google, Google TV, Logitech, Off-Topic, Revue

Logitech has released its first commercials for the Revue, the first Google TV box to hit the market. The commercials are so weird on so many levels - it looks like Logitech is going to be using a giant TV with legs as the mascot. Not creepy enough? The TV either displays a giant human eye or a giant human mouth. Like I said, freaking weird.

_{I'm not going to lie, I'd probably freak the hell out too.}

Luckily, that's the worst of them.

Oh, wait...

_{Pictured: breakfast at a typical American household.}

Maybe not.

On the plus side, we can clearly see what they're shooting for with Google TV (although we already had an idea): gaming, web browsing, video chatting, and so on.

Aug

Facebook For Android App Dev Hates Android, iOS, Kittens

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Apps/Games, Development

Joe Hewitt, the man behind Facebook Mobile for both the iPhone and Android, hates Android. And the iPhone. And judging by his twitter feed, he also hates people, kittens, unicorns, and the Salvation Army. Just kidding - but as Chris says, he's definitely a "negative nancy." (Yea, we're going for the high-brow stuff today).

Ouch. This is the same guy who left Facebook's iPhone dev team because of Apple's tyranny. I'm not a programmer, but I can't imagine any system is perfect to code for, and frankly I haven't heard any other devs complain about coding for Android.

That's an unedited snapshot of his twitter feed.

Aug

Froyo Root For HTC EVO 4G Released

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Froyo 2.2, News

Last Updated: December 15th, 2010

This method is majorly out of date. Generally, every update breaks the current root method, and a new one must be found. By now, this is 3-4 cycles old. Please check XDA-Developers forums or unrevoked for alternate (and current) methods.

This one is sure to make plenty of people happy: it looks like there's finally a root method for the latest EVO OTA. The method was discovered by XDA-Devs user Dan Wager and is based on Sebastian Krahmer's Droid 2 root - although this seems to achieve root by downgrading to Android 2.1 and flashing unrevoked. Just like the Droid 2 root, the method is new and thus still pretty complex:

Make sure your phone is unplugged from your computer until I tell you to plug it in!

Aug

Mark DeLoura Leaves Post As Google's Game Developer Advocate

Posted by Andrew Huff in Development, Games, News

Mark DeLoura, who was hired by Google about 5 months ago to fill the much-needed position of Games Developer Advocate, just announced he has left the company. This marks the second big name to leave Google's gaming department (Games at Google) this summer.

The reason for Mark's departure from Google? It wasn't a perfect fit for him - or at least that his story and he's sticking to it! In the official announcement on his blog, Mark wrote:

"I enjoyed working with many of the people there, but it was not the perfect fit for me."

Mark also spoke about the progress that has been made over at Games at Google, outlining the building of apps in the browser and the greater developer flexibility.