Sunday, December 19, 2010

Android 2.2 froyo Sneak peek

Awesome video about android future and its upcoming 2.2 froyo version features from VP of engineering, Google.
It includes nice demonstrations of rich applications and monetization plan for apps. I liked their new features like ability to install apps on SD card and making phone as wifi hotspot.  With earlier versions tethering your phone is a pain, thanks that Google fixed it now.Waiting for HTC to push this update in INDIA.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Saving Android Battery

I recently observed my android phone battery getting drained even in half a day. After searching on net i found switching on 3G,GPS,frequent Sync are the main culprits in draining of battery. Once i started using them judiciously I now see my battery lasting 2 days without recharging.
Here is one of the best articles I found about saving your battery life on android phones.
http://www.wikihow.com/Save-Battery-Power-on-an-Android

Monday, November 22, 2010

My favourite android apps.

Its been 2 to 3 months since i started with my new android phone. Here are the list of top 10 apps in my phone.

  1. Advanced Task Killer  Advanced Task Killer allows you to stop running background processes or apps in memory. Android supports lot of apps to run concurrently but this causes performance degradation if we keep more apps running. Default way of closing/killing apps in android is through android settings, which takes too much time to load apps list. With ATK you can select deselect multiple apps at once and kill them to free some memory on your phone.  This app can be downloaded from market for free.
  2. Astro File Manager Astro helps you browse files on your android SD card. Apart from file browsing it has lot of cool tools which helps you backup applications,compressing files,attachment preperation and even tools for managing your applications. It can be freely downloaded from android market.
  3. Talking Tomcat This I downloaded from appbrain. One of the app which people of every age likes. This cat is like your real pet which responds to your actions and repeats your words in funny way. There is a facility to record and upload the video to youtube. Definitely one of my favourite.
  4. Bump  This app makes sharing photos, contacts, and apps with people as simple as bumping your phones together. It works with android as well as iPhone. I feel this is the most cool way to share apps with your friend. This can be downloaded free from market.
  5. Gesture Search This is the most fancy way to search your phone for contacts,files etc. Gesture Search lets you quickly find a contact, an installed application, a bookmark or a music track on your Android phone by drawing alphabet gestures on the touch screen. I generally search my contacts using this app by just writing on my phone's screen. Very useful app from googlelabs. Can be freely downloaded from market.
  6. Google Goggles Google Goggles lets you search Google using pictures from your camera phones. They take an image as input, and using several image recognition backends (object recognition, place matching, OCR, etc), they return relevant search results. Another innovative app from google labs available for free.
  7.  Barcode Scanner Scan barcodes on products then look up prices and reviews. You can also scan Data Matrix and QR Codes containing URLs, contact info, etc. I use it to download apps from my search pages on laptop. Just scan the QR code on ur computer screen using ur phone and download the app. 
  8. My Tracks My Tracks is an application for your AndroidTM phone that enables you to record GPS tracks and view live statistics – such as time, speed, distance, and elevation – while hiking, biking, running or participating in other outdoor activities. Once recorded, you can share your tracks, upload them to Google Spreadsheets and visualize them on Google My Maps. 
  9. Amazon Kindle If you are a avid reader of books. This app is for you. lets you download books and read from your smart phone. Very convenient to use. 
  10. Google Apps Download all google apps like gmail, google finance,calander,youtube etc.. which will enable to sync directly to your online google accounts.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Android apps development setup

Developing android apps is simple.

First you need to install android SDK on your machine. Step by step documentation for the same can be found here.

Install User Interface (UI) designer/editor for programme droiddraw is the best one available for free. Can be download from here.


Test your setup with a sample application. There are lot of samples provided in SDK.  Typical Hello World can be tested using instructions given here.
Here you can find the list of sample applications with their descriptions which are copied to your computer along with SDK.

Hehe,  you are all set for developing your android applications. Conceive,design,build your android apps and release them in the market.

My Android Phone

I recently bought HTC Wildfire an android based phone. While researching about android based phones I found lot of interesting things about android based phones and started taking interest in android market in India. Last one year there were lot of android phones which were released in India, thanks to handset makers for making relatively cheaper handsets.
Here are the list of handsets i reviewed before taking decision on HTC wildfire (which is withim my budget). Will review each one of them in my subsequent posts.

1. HTC tattoo ( my first love with cheaper android phone)
2. Samsung Galaxy spica (Very good phone but out of stock when i tried to purchase)
3. Samsung Galaxy 3 and 5(Bought by one of my friend)
4. HTC wildfire
5. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and Mini ( Bought by one of my friend)

Apart from them i gave a thought about Samsung Galaxy S and HTC Desire(bought by 2 of my friends). Will review these phones as well in my next posts.