I'd like to buy an Acer Liquid E as an Android test phone (normal size, high density screen, android v2.1 up to 2.2).
Before actually doing that, it'll be great to know if anyone had any bad experience with it. My dev environment is Eclipse + ADT on Windows 7 64 bits. I'm thinking about things like USB drivers, logcat displayed correctly, breakpoints hit, and so on.
I read about this issue, but it's from 2009 and in the end it was solved anyway.
Thanks.
This is not exactly the answer to this question, but I'll post it in case it might be useful for some other developer in need.
In the end I did not go into buying this exact phone model. Instead I bought an Acer Liquid MT S120 (or Metal) phone. In order to be able to debug apps on it, I just had to look for official Acer Windows drivers.
Those where relatively easy to find (here version 1.0): the only quirk was that I had to select the former Android version (2.2 instead of actual 2.3) in order to see the drivers under the Application tab, otherwise they would not show.
Apart from that, debugging experience was very straightforward: plug USB in, and Eclipse/adb where able to see the device. APK upload times are really fast (I guess this holds for any USB-connected device too). The same holds for integration/functional tests.
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I've received a dk 3200 kit recently. I know it's old but I would like to start using it to have more of a challenge than just arduino. It came with the board, an st flashlink FL-101B and some cables. I do not have the install disc, but I found the software for psd soft express online. It doesn't work with current windows 7 64bit. If I could use my arduino to program it, that would be great! Or maybe just do it through USB or the parallel ports? I've read that st provides a stm32 library used to help make code. If that works for my mcu, I'll use that.
Thanks
ST is a company that loves to re-organize their website and break links, but a data sheet for a part of what seems to be the same family as on your board is available from a toolchain vendor at:
http://www.keil.com/dd/docs/datashts/st/upsd321x_ds.pdf
On page 118 this seems to indicate that programs can be loaded using JTAG In System Configuration commands, which may be somewhat standardized though quick searching isn't producing a lot of leads. A reference is also made to ST's AN1153 which would be worth trying to locate a copy of, however it's not entirely clear if that will say anything about the programming, or if it only covers the additional two optional signals which have been added for hardware acceleration of the interface.
In theory, if you can find sufficient information about this device (looking at related devices may provide clues) then you should be able to craft a programming from an Arduino or anything else that can be adapted to twiddle bits at the appropriate voltage/threshold levels.
In practice, you may be better off trying to find an old Windows XP box, or even trying to run that software on a virtual/emulated environment and trap the I/O access either to proxy or to figure out what it is doing and reverse engineer your own programmer.
But unless you have a large installed base of boards using these chips, or particular need some unusual feature of them (I thought I saw something about a built-in CPLD?) it's really not going to be worth the effort.
It has been a nice run of about 7 or 8 years now that we have developed Flash browser based games for the web exclusively. Of course with the ubiquity of mobile devices, things have changed. Clients are starting to demand, almost assume, that games will work in the browser - on the desktop and on their tablets.
Putting aside the whole discussion of using an HTML5/JS solution instead, we're sticking with Flash for the next project and need to figure out the best way to get it to run on the desktop browser and on the iPad, while maximizing code re-use.
Given the current state of technologies today, what is the best path? This game will be a 2D side-scroller type game with some physics, and development will be done mainly with bitmap graphics (as opposed to vector) and spritesheets.
Here are what I understand to be my options:
Option 1: Develop the game targeting the 'standard' flash player for web (11 or higher), then port to an iOS AIR 3.2 app, doing appropriate optimizations like the ones outlined here.
Option 2: Use Starling/Stage3D for desktop, and then port to an iPad app. Just wondering if starling is ready for primetime making production quality games for mobile + desktop. Does Stage3D still work well enough in software mode on older machines?
Option 3: The new feature in CS6 that lets us publish to HTML5. Is this even close to mature enough to publish a full game? The benefit of this solution is that it could run in the browser on the iPad instead of being a separate app.
Thianks so much for any guidance.. I'm also wondering about pitfalls, and optimization techniques involved in any of these. But it seems the underlying question in all this is should we use Starling/Stage3D or not?
Definitely Option 2.
You could go with Option 1, but performance on mobile would likely suffer without Stage3D hardware rendering.
Option 3 is only a good choice if you're designing/porting ad banners with basic animation, should be avoided for game development.
More here: Adobe Gaming SDK
First of all, i will explain what i want to do, maybe there is a simpler way.So, i have a Samsung s5230 star, and i'm a C++ programmer.Bad combination, considering that for my phone there is only Java support and documentation.So this is mainly why i want to switch to android (and because i'm a computer geek and i'm curious how can you install a OS on a phone, lol :)) )
So, my first question is : If i change the OS (to Android), could i have a chance in making some C++ code run on my Samsung?If yes, please lead me to some (detailed, noob friendly :) ) indications on how to do it.
And, the second one (important even if the first one is not true) : Can i install Android on Samsung s5230 star ?If so, please, also, lead me to some noob-friendly info on the install of Android on my phone (or any phone).
As a bonus (you can ignore this, but i didn't want to make another useless topic about it), are there any "secret combinations" on the Samsung s5230 ?Like if i'd want to do more than just speak on the phone...like some way to acces the equivalent of BIOS, just to goof around with the phone :)
Sorry for asking three questions in one topic, if you have an answer for any of them, please post it.Thanks :)
There was this project that was published for a while. I haven't ever tried it out, but if you want to, you can download it here. For the codes you can google around, one that works with every Samsung device is #0# e.g test mode. Also, if you shut the phone off and hold power and Vol - buttons simultaneously, it will enter a "DOWNLOAD" mode. (the only phones with UEFI are those with Windows pre-installed)
There is the Android NDK, which lets you develop for the Android OS using C++. See this link for details: NDK developer site. If you come from a C++ background, picking up Java is probably more trivial than wrestling with the NDK.
2 questions:
Can someone tell me if unmanaged c++ code will
be supported in future versions of Phone 7 OS for all developers?
What are MS reasons for not
supporting unmanaged c++ code?
This answer is purely speculative, but I feel that most others who have answered this question miss the point by a long shot. Let's for a moment assume that this is not a vindictive decision by Microsoft, but instead actually a very well thought out engineering decision that has absolutely nothing to do with content restrictions or otherwise. Those issues are just a bonus for MS
Microsoft is entering into the mobile market, this time for real it seems. Pretty soon there will be tens of millions of Nokia phone being shipped using Windows Phone and whatever they get on top of that will just be gravy. Windows Phone though still hasn't really found its home.
In the next year or two, phones, tablets and laptops will finally start converging into a single device. People will carry their phone in their pockets, but that phone will also be the CPU unit of their PC. That means that by simply sitting near a wireless HDMI monitor and connecting a keyboard and mouse via wireless USB (or bluetooth if we're all unlucky), the user will have their entire PC with them at all times. Tablets will become just a battery powered touch screen which interfaces to the PC in your pocket.
So, all software written for Windows Phone should be able to run unmodified on a PC, a tablet and/or a phone. This is because there's a huge chance that the PC you're running will be either x86 or ARM based running Windows 8. When the PC is in your pocket, the user interface you'll see will be the Windows Phone GUI. When you're hooked up to a monitor, you'll see the ribbon interface. But the underlying OS will most likely be Windows 8, not the Windows CE that is currently used.
Based on all this, the only way Microsoft can insure that developers who invest in producing apps for the Windows Mobile market will not be screwed and that users of Windows Mobile devices won't be shorted when the newer platform comes around is to ensure there is a standard system for running apps on all these processors.
Even now, writing for Honeycomb is a nightmare since if you develop native code, you have to support both ARM and x86 and there's no real support mechanism for it. The only solution is to develop, package and ship two versions. Writing apps for iDevices are a little easier since there's no overlap. x86 on desktop, ARM on device. If you have to use native code on device, ARM is all you need. Even then, there is fat binary support on both device and desktop, so this won't be a problem except when optimizing.
In the end, the decision by Microsoft to stick strictly to .NET is probably a good one. Once they have a gazillion Nokia phones on the market and things have settled a bit, native code could be a real possibility.
These answers are for the application development perspective. OEMs can write native code today, as that's how they create drivers, but that's not open or available to most developers and therefore of no use to most.
For #1 Microsoft has made no announcements, so only Microsoft knows the answer and they're not saying.
For #2 it's all about code security and overall platfrom stability It's very tough to sandbox native code and they don't want your app being able to affect other apps or the platform itself. The general idea is that you should be using Silverlight or XNA for application development, so that's what they expose.
Windows phones will go nowhere with native support. Games and other more intensive apps are driving sales. Android was forced to blow the lid off of its NDK to support the games industry. As far as supporting multiple processors, etc., those of us doing this kind of work have been doing it for a long time, so its no problem. Already handling Intel and ARM without a problems with our systems.
EDIT, finally: for WP7 unmanaged code won't ever be supported, but in Windows Phone 8 - yes it will! They've just announced it. Native apps, C/C++, iOS/Android portability and code sharing, DirectX. You'll need Visual Studio 2012 and Windows 8 for WP8 development, though. Looks like VS2010 is not getting the requisite WinRT SDK.
The nongame UI, however, will still be XAML-based. Win32 API will not be supported. They're pushing a model with managed UI layer and a native middleware beneath it.
SDK will be available later this summer.
For the sake of posterity, here's the pre-06/20/2012 answer:
Microsoft probably can.
To ensure platform closeness, as a means for attaining stability and UI consistency. To enforce app isolation. Also, to make jailbreaking/rooting harder.
EDIT: if you want a native SDK on WP7, like I do, please go sign this petition and/or that petition. Thank you!
EDIT: see this.
EDIT: also this. Still not official, but this rumor moves the timeframe for native app support even closer - to the upcoming Tango release.
I believe MS will support native development like C/C++. Really. Seriously.
Because, for end users, one of the killer app is game. And Most of game codes are based on C/C++. JS or C# based codes are exist, but meaningless from industrial perspective. Consider big players in game field like Unreal or EA. They made huge investment on C/C++ codebase. They won't give it up. In other words, MS has no power to force them to spend money for .NET. Even Xbox360 development offers C/C++ development. Because of that.
And leading platforms like iOS/Android all supports native development. WP can't bear up the situation without any game from big players. MS really wants 3rd path games, and offering native code is the only way to get them.
Of course, this can be applied to other apps which are not game, but games are biggest one. When C#/XNA just came out, there's no library. People had to make everything themselves. Now there're a little more, but still meaningless for professional games.
If MS won't offer native environment, just don't go there. MS wants to make developers to use managed .NET code, but .NET has too many limitations can be solved with only unmanaged code.
The only question is just when will MS support native development.
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I've noticed that chinese mobile phones became very popular, perhaps because of their very reasonable price and many modern features (touch screens, advanced multimedia, double sim cards etc).
I'm wondering if there's any way to develop custom solutions for this handsets as independent developer? How to obtain a toolkit and documentation?
I've found some resources, but mainly inconsistent tech notes, often in chinese only. For now I know, that majority of chinese handsets are based on chips from MediaTek (MTK), with operating system based on Nucleus RTOS and MMI (plutoMMI?) framework. Unfortunately, there is no Java RE avaiable (ok, there are some handsets with Java, however, Java isn't something I'm looking for)
Is there any SDK, documentation, emulators/simulators, how-tos, etc avaiable? How to develop, deploy and test custom application for MTK mobile?
I am enginner at design company. I have MTK development platform for MT series mobiles with English explanation. The original release and manuals are written in English(About 300mb pdf files). The SDK have simulator written in Visual C++. MMI interface working under nucleus rtos os. The codes are V++.
The MTK service is charged. You need to contact them and pay for the chip, software SDK, document, and technical support.
I don't know where you get the "some resource", but it must be leaked by some customer of their, thus using these resource will be considered as illegal.
I work with a lot of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers because we export mobile phones from China. I'm really interested in building a new applications, especially an email program, for these MTK based devices. Now it's a bit late to be looking at the 6225 platform because the 6235 platform seems to be where we'll see the most growth moving forward. The major differences that I'm aware of between the 6235 and 6225 are that 6235 supports Wi-Fi, works with EDGE, and is faster.
Steve, you mentioned the G2. I think that Android will be the breakout OS for Chinese phone manufacturing. Once their local engineers and designers get a handle on it a plethora of both ridiculous and useful applications and models will flourish and there won't be major export (customs) problems as we see now with the Windows Mobile devices (because the Chinese typically don't offer licensed software).
For platform sources this can be a starting point :
https://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/downloads/nucleus-source-interest_reg
I have no real experience on RTOS, I am GNU/Linux guy
I just bought a SciPhone G2 Dream and have done some initial investigation. This particular phone runs J2ME applications but I am also wondering what can be done (if anything) with native applications. Ideally I would like to get my Bluetooth GPS to work with this phone.
This page discusses getting GCC to work with Nucleus but I'm not sure whether this is useful.
Mentor (the makers of Nucleus) have a trial version of their developer suite available. I have just requested a free trial. It is a bit concerning that the website makes no mention of the cost. They also have an emulator.
What sort of phone did you get and what sort of applications are you planning to develop?
I'm in same wagon like you, trying to select an smartphone with WIFI and available SDK, low cost (lower thatn 40$). Also contacted Mediatek without results. I can give you a piece of advice, in reality is what I'm doing now. Try to negotiate a bulk purchase with a supplier together with access to SDK and documentation. I did that before with an ARM based Thinclient and worked, but I had to buy 30 pcs.
I'm not exactly sure of what you mean by a 'Chinese' phone. However, you may be talking about ODM phones. Most of the time, these phones are system clones of regular phones with some customisation. It may be a good idea to just buy one and take it apart to see what platform it runs on. Maybe it uses OMAP or something else? In which case, you probably have more knowledge on how to proceed. Maybe it is even compatible with Linux.