Android Developer Labs for Melbourne

Luke and myself attended the first Android Developers Lab for 2012 in Melbourne recently.

The focus of the day was on Ice Cream Sandwich, Googles new version of the Android operating system. Google has invested a considerable amount of effort and money in their latest Android operating system offering. One of the great enhancements is the Roboto font, designed to scale well on different resolutions.

Ice Cream Sandwich aims to make Android apps uniquely Android. The question of "What should an Android application look like?" has officially been answered. The Android Design site was recently launched to illustrate and describe to developers how to design exceptional Android applications. This covers everything from writing style to the UI components and design patterns, such as the action bar and multi-pane layouts.

• http://developer.android.com/design/index.html

The first half of the day discussed the Android Design style, patterns and building blocks. This followed on with an introduction to new features, such as WiFi Direct and Near Field Communication, and the simplicity of the API's to use these features in your own applications.

After we convened for lunch, we delved in to the code lab for the day. The code lab project aimed to introduce developers to fragments, and leverage fragments to enable more flexibility with their applications. A typical Android application would have an activity for each user interface, fragments can be used to combine multiple user interfaces into a single user interface. This allows applications to be design and provide a more enriching user experiences for a range of different type of Android enabled devices.

Android apps created by Remora engineers

Our engineers have created some useful Android apps in their spare time, and even made a bit of extra cash doing so. Christian has even had his successful myUsage application reach into the top 50 paid applications in Australia, while my TruckerTimer app has thousands of truck driving users across Europe relying on it to keep them compliant with EU regulations.

See our applications at:

• https://market.android.com/developer?pub=CMengler

and

• https://market.android.com/developer?pub=SpottyDog

Waiting on Ice Cream Sandwich

The next release of Android OS is code named Ice Cream Sandwich, with new features for both Tablets and phones we are all looking forward to this release

Samsung Galaxy S2

Well after having the Galaxy S1 for almost 12 months I have upgraded to the S2.

I have to say the new release of this phone is amazing, its fast and lightweight, battery life is better than the S1 and with a few tweaks will last a lot longer than the older model even with the dual core processor.

Custom ROM on the S2

Well after having the S2 for a month or so I've flashed a custom ROM.

After using custom ROMs on the S1, I decided to do the same to the S2 to see how much better it can be, and I have to say I'm impressed.

I'm now running CheckROM found at XDA and I'm using the Speedmod Kernel with BLN and its a dream, I was also able to add the Ice Cream Sandwich launcher to get a newer feel waiting for the first full release of ICS for the S2.

Battery life is so much better with most of the stock supplied Samsung apps and services removed, the user experience also feels more snappy.