More Payment Options in Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]A key to a great purchasing experience is providing users with simple and fast payment methods. The Android Market team has been working hard to deliver more forms of payment to further reduce purchase friction.Today, I am pleased to announce...

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It’s not “rooting”, it’s openness

[This post is by Nick Kralevich, an engineer on the Android Security Team. — Tim Bray]“Nexus S has been rooted, let the madness commence!” proclaims Engadget. “This is only possible because Android's security is crap and it's exploited easily to gain root priviledges [sic]” adds a commenter.You’ll have to excuse...

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Android Browser User-Agent Issues

[This post is by Bart Sears, who manages the Android Browser team. —Tim Bray]This posting describes some issues when browsing websites with mobile variants using large-form-factor Android devices. This posting will be of interest both to OEMs (with recommendations on how to set the User Agent string for...

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Analytics for Android Apps

[This post is by Alexander Lucas, an Android Developer Advocate bent on saving the world 5 minutes. —Tim Bray]With the addition of custom variables to the Mobile Analytics SDK for Android, it strikes me as a good time to cover something many of you might not have known was possible — using Google...

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New Gingerbread API: StrictMode

[This post is by Brad Fitzpatrick, an Android Software Engineer who worries unreasonably about responsiveness. —Tim Bray]Back StoryOne great thing about Google is “20% time”: spending 20% of your time working on projects outside your main focus area. When I joined Google, I bounced all over the place, often...

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Android Market Client Update

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]The Android Market engineering team has been hard at work on improving the Android Market experience for users and developers. Today, I’m pleased to announce a significant update to the Android Market client. Over the next two weeks, we’ll...

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Saving Data Safely

With the advent of Gingerbread, we’re going to be running a series of posts in this space about the aspects of Android 2.3 that developers should care about. One thing that developers should care about more than anything else is not losing data. The rules are changing slightly as Gingerbread arrives, so I thought...

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Android 2.3 Platform and Updated SDK Tools

Today we're announcing a new version of the Android platform — Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). It includes many new platform technologies and APIs to help developers create great apps. Some of the highlights include:Enhancements for game development: To improve overall responsiveness, we’ve added a new concurrent...

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Content Rating for Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Tim Bray]Providing users with more information about applications on Android Market has been a top request from Android users. Starting in a few weeks, we will be showing content ratings for all applications on Android Market. This new capability will provide users with additional information to help them select the best applications for them....

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Market Housekeeping Alert

We’ve had quite a bit of discussion in this space recently about how to make sure that your app is visible in Android Market to any device that can run it, and only to those devices. In particular, check out two recent pieces by Reto Meier, Future-Proofing Your App and The Five Steps to Future Hardware Happiness.As Reto points out, Market used to infer some <uses-feature> settings for older...

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Android Market Action

Almost instantly after I joined Google, it became obvious to me that the number-one area where Android developers wanted to see action and progress was in Android Market; your concerns in this area vastly outweighed whatever issues might be bothering you about the handsets and the framework and the programming...

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Improving App Quality

[This post is by Roman Nurik, who is passionate about icons. —Tim Bray]With thousands of new apps being published in Android Market every week, it’s becoming more and more important to proactively work at breaking through the clutter (hooray for marketing jargon!). One way of improving your app’s visibility...

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Traceview War Story

I recently took my first serious look at Traceview, and it occurred to me, first, that there are probably a few other Android developers who haven’t used it and, second, that this is an opportunity to lecture sternly on one of my favorite subjects: performance improvement and profiling. This is perhaps a little...

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The Five Steps to Future Hardware Happiness

[This post is by Reto Meier AKA @retomeier, who wrote the book on Android App development. —Tim Bray]Two questions I regularly get asked are “Why isn’t my app visible on the Market on the (insert device name here)?” and “How can I prepare for GoogleTV and Android tablets?” If you care about how broadly your app...

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Android Market New Country Roll-out Details

[This post is by the Android Market team. — Tim Bray]Last week, we announced that over the next two weeks, users in 18 additional countries would gain the ability to purchase paid apps from Android Market. Effective today, users can now see paid apps in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore,...

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More Countries, More sellers, More buyers

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. — Tim Bray]Since we launched Android and Android Market, we have seen the population of Android users and devices expand into many countries. This widespread adoption has brought with it growing interest in Android Market’s support for the buying and selling...

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Reflections on G-Kenya

[This post is by Reto Meier AKA @retomeier, who wrote the book on Android App development. — Tim Bray]Recently I visited Kenya for the three-day G-Kenya event. I was there for two reasons:To talk about Android and the emerging mobile opportunities for African developers.To ask questions and find out more about...

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Proguard, Android, and the Licensing Server

[This post is by Dan Galpin, an Android Developer Advocate specializing in games and comics. — Tim Bray]The Securing Android LVL Applications blog post makes it clear that an Android developer should use an obfuscation tool such as Proguard in order to help safeguard their applications when using License Server....

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