Android Development

Last week my dad went to the T-Mobile store and got my grandma a mobile phone. While he was there he called me to ask if I had heard of the G1. I said that I had not but when he mentioned that it was running something from Google I immediatly perked up. I HAD heard of android. I just didn’t know that they had something out in the market yet. Once I got off the phone I decided to check out the SDK and dig a little deeper.

The last couple months I’ve been really frustrated with the lack of a really good scripture reading program for the Blackberry. I did find a couple scripture reading programs: Noah Bible Study, Olive Tree, and the open source mobile one GoBible. However, none of them give me exactly what I want. OliveTree is as closed as it gets becuase they won’t let you add your own content (something I would have to do for the LDS Standard Works). Noah is the same way, only they are open to the idea of creating your own content (see the bottom of their page), but it’s not there now. GoBible is the best on that front, except they bundle the scripture and the reader together into a single application which would lead to app/code bloat…something you really want to avoid on a mobile platform. So, that leaves me reading scriptures with the MobiPocket viewer on the Blackberry. While MobiPocket is a great platform for eBooks, it really stinks when it comes to reading scriptures. If I want to read D&C 107:99 I have to scroll through a lot of links before I can get to the chapter and then I have to scroll through another ton of links to get to verse 99. Paper is faster.

So, even before the call from my dad, I have been looking into creating my own viewer that would use a library model for books, so anybody could add their own scriptures, store them where they wanted to on the device or on an microSD card, and quickly navigate where they wanted to in the scriptures.

 So, when my dad had called I had already spent over 12 hours configuring my environment and trying to develop a Blackberry app (as opposed to a traditional J2ME app). I had finally gotten “Hello World” to come up and was debating on what to do from here. Apparently there is no standard file browser widgit for the Blackberry, so I was debating on developing one or working on my content first. I had decided on content when I got the call from my dad.

So, I investigated devopment for android. Conclusion: In the same amount of time it took me to get “Hello World” on the Blackberry, I had created a fully functional app, with menus, icons, and the works. Not a scripture one, mind you, but still an application far beyond “Hello World”.

Why the difference?

Documentation and examples.

While some of the Android docs and examples are a bit out of date (look at Listening for UI Notifications, it’s View.OnClickListener, not OnClickListener), they are still easier to use, straight forward, and walk you through the whole process. With the Blackberry you don’t get that. There are hidden bits of knoweldge that you must have before developing to the platform. For example, did you know that the JDK you download is directly related to the version of the blackberry os you develop for? So, if you download the 4.2.1 JDK you are developing for 4.2.1 or higher of the OS? I didn’t know that when I went and downloaded the JDK 4.6.0. Stupid stuff like that is what really frustrated me when it came to developing for the Blackberry.

So, what app? That’s another story, but to sum it up, I’ve lost almost 30 lbs while attending Weight Watchers. I wrote an app to help me calculate points.