android says, “hello world”…

The Android SDK has been released. Based on the youtube demos, API and architecture, it seems this may be my alternative to J2ME. One of my major concerns with the openness of Android, was security. On this platform, what is a secure application? How does an application get more, or less permission? This section gives some answers.

Some have already made sample applications. This is a good thing because early adopters make the current buzz even stronger. Now, if these adopters they make usable applications, others will definitely follow. For example, look at the history of Google Maps. Users create and use applications based on the Google Map API daily. Not simply because it’s a Google item, but because of its ease of use and functionality.

As for hardware sales, in order for this to compete with (destroy) the iPhone, the GPhone will have to be somewhat sleek, and give a reasonable amount of of screen space. Also, gyroscopic elements wouldn’t hurt… I’d love to be able to turn the phone on its side and have the screen auto-magically rotate. Oh, and not having to change my service to AT&T would be nice.

One obvious thing in all of this is Google’s branding power: it’s unheard of! What other company in existence can release an API with an emulator, and have jerks (like myself) salivating over their unavailable mobile device (maybe by Q3 of 2008). Believe me, I’m not a Google fanboy; I’ve already gone with OpenLaszlo over GWT. Yeah, I use GoogleDocs, but OpenOffice is my primary document editor. Although I’ve seen Guice’s robustness and agility (performance benchmarks), I am going to stay a Spring user. Primarily, because I use more than Spring’s IOC/DI support. In the end, J2ME was not what I wanted in a mobile application dev-kit. So, I’ll give Android a try.