Android Mobiles

Anyone who closely follows the future of Android knows that development builds are referred to by incrementally alphabetic desserts – Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo. So that makes “G” the next unknown, right? Well Brian Swetland, an Android Kernel expert, recently told us to run, run as fast as we can, we can’t catch him he’s the gingerbread man!

This week we’re finalizing our move to 2.6.32 for the Android “Froyo” release, and we’ll likely be on .33 or .34 for “Gingerbread”.

Yup, the next version of Android is codenamed Gingerbread! The next unknown is now “H” – any guesses? We threw out “Gelato” for G and “Honey” for H (see the list) but it seems like Google is going the route of baked goods.

[ Brian Swetland via AndroidAndMe]

Things like this just make me… jealous:

That’s Flash Lite running on the Nexus One. And I don’t mean Flashlight as in something that will brighten up a room in the pitch black – I mean Adobe’s video/animation platform.

I can hear half of the readers thinking in their head “Thus are the beauties of rooting” but apparently Leakdroid asked the guy who made the video and he has an inside route to the Flash Lite engine for work purposes. And of course, isn’t able to distribute it.

Usually we see a sexy device running WinMo or some proprietary garbage and think, “If it only had Android.” Well Archos did quite the inverse today, telling owners of the Android-based Archos 5 Internet Tablet that they could overwrite Android and load their machine with a full Linux distribution known as Angstrom Linux.

ARCHOS made this available as a simple update but warned that only experienced users should continue, calling it special developer edition firmware and suggesting it is in alpha/beta testing phase:

“If you are not a programmer/developer and would just like to try it out, understand that it will have capabilities inferior to that of the standard Archos operating system.”

So if you’ve got an ARCHOS and enjoy tinkering – or  maybe you enjoy taking a fully capable device and downgrading it – move forward. This isn’t exactly like overwriting Vista with Win XP… in my mind that was a good move but cmon, who wants to delete their Droid?

[Via Reg Hardware]

Enough already! That’s what one guy who wanted an Xperia X10 must have thought about the delays so he took upon it himself to fulfill his urge. Yup… he ported Android to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10:

That’s actually looking pretty darn good! There are a few things not working at the moment, like bluetooth, camera and GPS… but not too bad! It was done by none other than XDA Devs and you can head over there if you have the guts to try this yourself… proceed at your own risk!

Before we told you about a special Android Developer’s Lab at this year’s MWC in Barcelona. Well, for those of you who will be unable to make it to this year’s MWC, the Android Developer’s Lab will be coming to a city near you. Check out this year’s tour dates for February and March:

North America

• Austin, Texas – Feb 4
• Seattle, Washington – Feb 8
• Waterloo, Ontario, Canada – Feb 8
• Washington, D.C. – Feb 9
• Mountain View, California – Feb 10
• Cambridge, Massachusetts – Feb 11
• New York, New York – Feb 12

Europe

• London, UK – Feb 2
• Paris, France – Feb 8
• Berlin, Germany – Feb 10
• Zurich, Switzerland – Feb 12
• Madrid, Spain – Feb 13

Asia

• Singapore – Feb 28
• Taipei, Taiwan – March 3
• Hong Kong – March 5

Very good news for those of us who are unable to make it to MWC in Barcelona this year. We hopefully will see a huge jump in Android app development from all the labs. What new breakthroughs and development would you like to see?

[via AndroidDevelopersBlog]

Anyone traveling to Barcelona this month? Well if so be sure to check out a special Android Developer’s Lab at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) on Wednesday, February 17th as part of the inaugural event.

The App Planet will offer technical presentations and a developer’s lounge. The Android Developer Lab will offer various resources for everyone from the inexperienced to the pro developers out there.

There are also limited space so for those interested sign up and reserved your space at MWC and plan to attend the Android Developer Lab.

Should be a great opportunity out there for any of you developers to ask questions and share thoughts to help the development of Android apps. Any of our developers out there attending? Let us know and report back!

[via AndroidDevelopersBlog]

The good folks at HTC have been pretty consistent about getting the Kernel Source Code and Binaries of their Android Phones out there into the public realm. While most Android users have no need/use for them, this equips the Android hackers and modders with the stuff they need to create customized builds and goodies for rooted phones. And at the most basic level, it gives them a better understanding of how HTC does what they does (purposeful typo).

The code was released today and you can download it in a 63.7MB file. Head over to the HTC Developer page to snag it. Snap to it devs… and does what you does best!