Android 1.5 gets official SDK for native development

Java-based development within a specialized, optimized virtual machine is one of the founding principles of the platform that makes Android what it is -- but sometimes, you need a little more oomph and you've got to bend the rules to make that happen. Google's totally cool with that, it turns out, and today they've released the Android 1.5 Native Development Kit (NDK) that allows developers to generate C and C++ libraries that run directly on the platform rather than being routed through Dalvik. The Android team pulls no punches that devs should be careful when going native, saying "your application will be more complicated, have reduced compatibility, have no access to framework APIs, and be harder to debug" -- but as they note, there'll be times when the improved performance and deeper access to hardware will be a boon. As with HTC's Sense, it'll be interesting to see how this affects the platform going forward.

[skyblaze @ Jun 25th 2009 5:35PM]

hey engadget... today's my birthday. skyblaze is nineteen, ya digg...

one thing i always wanted to learn was developing... too bad i never became that good at it...

[iDavey @ Jun 25th 2009 5:36PM]

Aww...19 seems so far away nowadays.

I need to stop being old spirited =|

[djmanoloco @ Jun 25th 2009 5:57PM]

If you are nineteen why the hell do you still type like a 12 year old? "Whats a skyblaze goin' to do?"

[kjb434 @ Jun 25th 2009 6:02PM]

Agree djmanoloco!

If 19 is such a big thing for this kid, then he should type and converse like one.

[skyblaze @ Jun 25th 2009 6:08PM]

hey, you're sayin it wrong... and its for the laughs. some people are way too stiff here and don't have a sense of humor, ya digg... alot of people like my comments tho :)

and honestly bein 19 isnt that big a deal to me... today kind of sucked actually...

[Clyde Berry @ Jun 25th 2009 6:47PM]

Being 19 sucks for about 2 years in the US. Then beer comes and makes everything a little more tolerable.

[Mikeweezer @ Jun 25th 2009 8:05PM]

skyblaze - you have plenty of time to learn to program and invent the next facebook (or smartphone OS, whatever). Get to work! ~ oh, and give me a job when you are rich & famous ;)

happy birthday

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 25th 2009 8:10PM]

Skyblaze, I spent over 3 years in college, and another 2 years afterwards persuing the wrong thing until I finally jumped into software development. You are only 19, and have the whole world in front of you.

There are as many opinions about programming as their are people on the earth, but if you want to get your feet wet, I would recommend getting started with a more modern, simpler language like Java, Python, or C#. If you really only want to get involved in web application development and want something really easy, then I'd probably get started with PHP. There are hundreds of excellent sources online for learning programming -- google is your friend.

And I'd definitely recommend O'Reilly's "Head First" series books for novices. They are the best, no-nonsense, layman's explanation of programming concepts I've ever seen published. They have books on C#, Java, PHP, Mysql, object-oriented programming, design patterns, databases, UI, etc. (and no I don't have any vested interest in Oreilly media)

http://headfirstlabs.com/books.php

Good Luck!

[skyblaze @ Jun 25th 2009 8:23PM]

lol, thanks you guys. you're all really inspirational... ill see just what i can do!

lol, you'll be first on my list, Mikeweezer :)

my day just got a lil better... i know this isn't a chat room but, between all the sad breaking news and not bein able to see the girl i love ive been feelin real down. thanks again!

[stefan @ Jun 25th 2009 9:12PM]

Engadget readers are surprisingly gentle. Imagine the replies to Skyblazer on the likes of Youtube.

[Chris @ Jun 26th 2009 12:52AM]

I became a programmer at 22, after I worked in a bank and decided to change for a job I would love.
See, you still have time to learn ^_^

[Taylor. Yes, Taylor. @ Jun 26th 2009 4:27AM]

Dude, I'm 24 and I just started developing! You've got plenty of time! Just start workin on it now, when you get older life gets really busy! I work 50 hours a week and it's hard to find time to develop!
-Taylor

[iDavey @ Jun 25th 2009 5:39PM]

Now...this should mean some wondrous things ahead for Android.
I can't wait to see what this produces.

Now...as I will state in every Android post from now on

-clears throat-

Can we please get a nice looking handset, small buttons, nice layout, 3.5in screen or higher, AMOLED screen, 1500mAh battery, usual smartphone inclusions, Snapdragon or Tegra chipset (although I personally prefer Snapdragon), and have it in US flavor first...

Thank you

[Ed Burnette @ Jun 25th 2009 8:00PM]

The Samsung i7500 is closer to what you want.

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 25th 2009 8:12PM]

Yes, and available on Verizon! I've been waiting for a phone running iPhone OS, Android, or WebOS for years now!

- Android 2.0
- WVGA or OLED (both not going to happen)
- Snapdragon core 45nm @ 1.3Ghz
- 512MB ram

[Information Central @ Jun 25th 2009 8:16PM]

Don't forget a HEADPHONE JACK.

[zenstylejunglist @ Jun 25th 2009 5:41PM]

DALVIK DALVIK DALVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sid @ Jun 25th 2009 5:45PM]

I wrongly thought android was always meant to be open.
What exactly is its reason for existence?

[iDavey @ Jun 25th 2009 5:50PM]

Android is THE only true open source mobile OS.

It complies with the OSD perfectly.

[jonshipman @ Jun 25th 2009 5:55PM]

A plateform always needs an SDK. Sure you can be HTC and do all the skinning you want. But if you want something easy, then an SDK from the guys who made it and know all the ins and outs of the OS can only make it easier. Expect more Android skins/themes from the community now.

[CindyTorman @ Jun 25th 2009 6:02PM]

Android was backed by many many manufacturers and carriers to force Symbian into open source. Which it did successfully.

[iDavey @ Jun 25th 2009 6:29PM]

Symbian technically isnt open source because they don't comply with the OSD.
Requiring a fee to participate in the foundation technically excludes them from being true open source.

[newjaruz @ Jun 25th 2009 5:46PM]

I agree with all those specs iDavey
you should also put VGA or WVGA on you wish list as well
That would be perfection

[iDavey @ Jun 25th 2009 5:49PM]

For some reason...I'm starting to think Android is not meant for anything higher than HVGA. Same as WinMo can't really do more than 65k colors...

[shootingblue @ Jun 25th 2009 5:55PM]

WVGA and QVGA are in the Android roadmap. I expect we'll probably see it in Donut (2.0)

[jonshipman @ Jun 25th 2009 5:56PM]

Higher res support is coming in 2.0

[iDavey @ Jun 25th 2009 5:59PM]

Well alrighty then...add some 480x800 support on my lil wish list and lets get it going!

[chefgon_ign @ Jun 25th 2009 6:06PM]

Rudimentary hi-res support is already there, there's nothing to prevent you from writing an application that's optimized for 1024x600 if you want, and programs that use the built-in UI controls will do their best to scale up.

It's not full-blown optimized support like is supposedly coming in 2.0, but the whole thing was obviously designed from the ground up to support many different resolutions.

[vitriolix @ Jun 25th 2009 9:37PM]

Donut != 2.0:

http://bit.ly/pRQT3

"Fwiw, there is no such thing as "Android 2.0" at this point. I don't know where in the world that has come from, but it doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is the Donut development branch, which will be given some as-yet-undetermined version number when it is done."

-Dianne Hackborn

[newjaruz @ Jun 25th 2009 11:41PM]

Well Diane, people are just perpetuating what seems to already be set in stone. Don't see why you feel the need to correct people when all the sources and websites on the internet seem to have tied in the number (2.0) and the word(Donut). If you don't believe me google it or do a search on this site I'm sure you will see results..... anyway I'll do it for you....

"Forget Cupcake, Android 2.0 “Donut” in the Works " - blog.toptenreviews.com
"Android 2.0 "Donut" features demoed at Google I/O" - engadget.com
"Google Android 2.0 Donut Has Universal Search and Text-to-Speech Powers" - Gizmodo.com
"Android Search, Text-To-Speech On Android 2.0 Donut (VIDEO)" - Phandroid.com
"Absolutely no news or announcement about Android 2.0 (Donut)." - Androidguys.com

just to point out a few ;-)

[newjaruz @ Jun 25th 2009 5:56PM]

Well Winmo has phones that support (WVGA/VGA) already, and according to this site in previous posts I have seen that the Android OS (when they launch donut) will support other resolutions both higher and lower than the currently supported HVGA because they will be putting android on netbooks and on a soon-to-be-released AT&T android phone thats is QVGA [correct me if I am wrong]. So I think an LED/VGA phone would make me 8-) and IS possible.

[newjaruz @ Jun 25th 2009 5:57PM]

Correct Mr. shootingblue! My thoughts exactly!

[DudeGuyLikesAndroid @ Jun 25th 2009 6:04PM]

does this mean we will see linux apps popping up in our near future??

[Tim @ Jun 25th 2009 6:32PM]

No. Only some very low-level libraries are 'stable' (libc, libm, zlib etc.). That means native code can't even output graphics yet.

[Dave @ Jun 26th 2009 4:07AM]

This is way out of the subject, but I'm a generation who grew up on games like Dune2...so I would love to see someone made a port of this game on android...that would be awesome! My long dream would come true. What you guys think? Is it really hard to port something, like old pc games onto Android platform?

[deinfinityx @ Jun 26th 2009 4:37AM]

They already have a doom port and a few emulator in the NES style so i think more ports of old games are in the works.

[Matt @ Jun 26th 2009 11:46AM]

There are ports of Doom and amazing NES, SNES and Genesis emulators that run at near 60 FPS in the Marketplace.

[kankurou @ Jun 25th 2009 6:33PM]

fun!

[chewbie @ Jun 25th 2009 7:12PM]

Finally! Now I can't wait for the wep cracking application to come out - after that I can truly say that it's better than the iPhone :P

[spam_from_engadget @ Jun 25th 2009 7:13PM]

With luck this might mean we see some iPhone apps being ported. Easiest will be those that don't use much Apple stuff, which most obviously means games that run with their own graphics over the whole screen and no Apple UI elements.

[eli42291 @ Jun 25th 2009 7:38PM]

wow

[Ed Burnette @ Jun 25th 2009 8:01PM]

It won't affect iPhone ports. Wrong language, wrong libraries.

[jonwil2002 @ Jun 25th 2009 8:13PM]

Is this something that the carriers (or manufacturers) will be able to restrict or block?

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 25th 2009 8:19PM]

Although this is a good start, this is NOT meant for full C++ GUI applications to run on Android. It is meant for developers to be able to call high-performance c++ code libraries from their Java/dalvik application. So the majority of code runs in the VM, and then calls into native code libraries for certain portions of the application that needs better performance for intensive calculations, like media processing, graphics, etc.

One crappy part about this is that it only supports ARMv5 instruction set at the moment, so none of the new optimizations available to ARM11 (Armv6) and particularly the new (ARMv7) ARM Cortex series processors are available to programmers. Hopefully they will eventually be able to support the new "NEON" SIMD engine in ARM Cortex which is blazing fast for SIMD/parallel processing.

[mtr @ Jun 25th 2009 9:41PM]

perfect android device for me?
qwerty slider, but thin
stainless steel alloy
tempered glass
fingerprint-free coating
good battery (for at least 24h on wifi and gps)
biult-in 8GB
camera as good as in samsung innov8
xenon flash
AMOLED, 3.5in, WVGA screen
biult-in FM radio and FM transmitter
decent CPU
tv-out
infrared

as for OS:
user friendly navigation with "offline" mode
movie player with divx support
full browser with flash
nice flickr client


:)

[RedSmurph @ Jun 29th 2009 6:21PM]

"specialized, optimized virtual machine"

But how is it optimized, considering bytecode is interpreted by Dalvik and not compiled? Just marketing speak?