Android 4.2.2 on low end devices
In fact I couldn’t really believe that Android 4.2.2 runs seamlessly on my low end legacy device Samsung Galaxy Fit . Thanks to Cyanogenmod 10 (CM10) team for creating after market custom ROM’s. The CM ROM performs much better than the stock ROM and operates without any glitch. I would recommend everyone who uses Android to root and install custom ROM’s which opens up a new world of Android OS which you cant experience in stock ROM’s. Trust me rooting doesn’t cause any harm to your device!
The best garage for Android Modd: http://forum.xda-developers.com
Link to Cyanogenmod: http://www.cyanogenmod.org/
Clockwork Mod Tool (must have app for every rooted device): http://www.clockworkmod.com/
Tech spec of SGS Fit
- 600Mhz ARM CPU
- 160MB internal memory
- 250MB RAM!!
Useful libraries for Android UI development
Hi All..Here I would like to share some important libraries round the corner that are far well useful for the application development. The following are few of them listed, but unfortunately I couldn’t sort it in a proper order. Anyways I will be making it more informative till then have a look
- Universal image Loader: I placed this library on the top because this one has helped me lot and moreover the configuration is quite easy and additionally with less or in fact causing no app crash. This library could be useful while loading images in listview or gridview from a URL. Here’s the project website https://github.com/nostra13/Android-Universal-Image-Loader
- Android amazing list-view: This library is used to create list-view with section headers. Android doesn’t have support for section headers in list-view. Hope this would be more useful while creating list-view with section headers in Android. Additionally item pagination is also available. More info https://code.google.com/p/android-amazing-listview/
- Android UItableview: This I would really love to use when I require to create list-views similar to UITableview in Iphone. The integration is very simple and easy. Project website: https://github.com/thiagolocatelli/android-uitableview
- Android wheel: Are you bored of using the standalone date picker in android but love to use date or time picker similar to iphone?? Here ends your search! Use this simple library to create pickers similar to Iphone. More information: https://code.google.com/p/android-wheel/
- StickyListHeaders: This one is also similar to creating section headers in list-view. For more: https://github.com/emilsjolander/StickyListHeaders
- Android-Pull to refresh: This is an amazing stuff. Create list-views and update data by pulling the list-view. Project website: https://github.com/johannilsson/android-pulltorefresh
- Android-Sliding Menu: Create apps with sliding menu similar to one found in Facebook and Google+ app. For more info: https://github.com/gitgrimbo/android-sliding-menu-demo
- Actionbar-Sherlock: Create actionbar in all versions of android. Actionbars are available from API level 11 onwards. this library would be useful for creating action bar in apps with API level <11. For more info: https://github.com/JakeWharton/ActionBarSherlock
This is for the time being more will be updated soon. Keep visiting..!!
Service- Does it serves as a background thread?
Services are one of the important application components in Android that helps to execute long running operations in background. In fact what I thought was, Services would execute as a background thread without interrupting the main thread. But soon I found that my assumption was wrong, in fact Service also run in the main thread of the application where the UI operations occur. Therefore, if we perform a long task in onStartCommand() method, it will block the main thread the end result is, unresponsive application . So to avoid the problem, you have to execute the complex task into a separate thread. this can be achieved with the help of
- Asynctask
- Declaring seperate Thread
Additionally there two memory management techniques as well. Declaring the return statement in onStartCommand() method.
START_STICKY: Notifies the OS to recreate the service after it has enough memory and call onStartCommand() again with a null intent.
START_NOT_STICKY: Notifies the OS not to recreating the service again.
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 12 years to get that many views.
Google Play Developer merchants in India
Recently android developers in India has got something to celebrate, Google has added support for setting up merchant account in India so that developers can upload paid app to play store now onward. No need to setup Paypal or in app purchases to sell your apps. Simple follow the steps given in the Google Merchant website. Here are the links that will lead you to the same
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/?hl=en#topic=15867
Threat to mobile developers and server side programmers
Well, its year 2012 we all know that technology has no limits especially in the field of IT. We can see innovations emerging from every nook and corner. In the case of IT the programming world has expanded like anything where we can find new programming languages being developed for every single piece of software or for large systems. Anyways today I would like to share some interesting stuff that may pose threat to mobile developers and server side programmers. First I would discuss about the threat that mobile developers gonna to face in future.
- In fact I would rather say mobile developers are the one who is gonna to get a hard kick on their back. Nowadays there are many cross platform SDK’s available online. The benefit of using cross platform SDK’s are many. One of the advantage is that the code can be executed on different platforms such as iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows mobile etc. Another advantage is that the developer need not to know indepth of mobile programming. Apart from these advantages there are disadvantages as well. The apps created using cross platform SDK are poor in performance. Say for example the touch events, scrolling etc. They couldn’t directly access the core hardware layers of the device. In short cross platform SDKs are more focused for web developers rather than mobile developers. Such SDK’s are not using any native functionality provided by the OS vendors. Rather they use Javascript, HTML5, JQuery for the development. Mobile development knowledge is only required for integrating the components. Some of the popular cross platform SDK’s are PhoneGap, Titanuim, Sencha Touch etc. These are only few examples you could find many other on web. I am rather confused why people prefer cross platform SDKs when you could get fully function native SDK from their respective developers. Lets see what happens next.
- Ok lets dive into server side programming and see whats gonna to hamper their future. First of all let me say I am not a server side programmer and I doubt whatever things that I am gonna to say is right or wrong. Yes, lets continue. Rrecently I came across a SDK known as “Parser”. For more info https://parse.com/. I am not elongating much, in short the SDK allows our application data to be stored on cloud rather than on servers. This SDK is meant for mobile developers who need not to know the server side programming such as PHP, JQuery whatever. Knowledge in mobile development is mandatory. You have complete control over your application data. Only thing you have is an account in parse. It supports mobile OSes such as Android,iOS and Windows. The SDK has got a very good documentation where you can get started with your server side coding for your app. Maybe it might have disadvantages as well.
END NOTE:
Whatever cross platform SDKs or ready made clouds are available still the native technologies on which the systems are built are more suitable at any situations.
