Thanks to LastStandingDroid over at the XDA forums, the Samsung Galaxy S II (I9100) has received an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean SDK port. With any SDK port, the build is fairly rough and one should expect many things to either not work, or not work correctly. Although there is a short list of things that do work: Read more
As we’ve seen over the last few days, folks are hard at work creating Jelly Bean ROMs for a variety of devices. Up to this point, work seems to be limited to smartphones or Nexus tablets. That appears to have changed with some work done by user randomblame over at XDA. He has succeeded in creating an SDK port of Jelly Bean for an Acer Iconia A500. It is not yet ready for daily use as several items are still not functioning, including audio, wifi, sdcard access, and usb mounting of flash drives. While work continues on those issues, users can at least get a taste of Jelly Bean if they are willing to root their device and install the ROM. Hit the source link for instructions and access to the files.
source: XDA
The HTC One X has gotten itself an SDK port of Google’s Jelly Bean firmware thanks to the XDA developer by the name of tgascoigne. At this point it’s nothing you can use as a daily driver, but serves as a great way to get yourself a nibble of Jelly Bean if you’re a One X user. Many things don’t work such as the camera, WiFi, audio, and much more. The developer has stated that he’s already working with the actual Galaxy Nexus OTA of Jelly Bean ported to the One X. If he’s able to get that working that build should be far more superior than the current SDK build. If you don’t mind your phone pretty much unusable but still want to give Jelly Bean a shot, then head on over to the XDA thread and flash away. Of course, needless to say, your One X will have to be rooted and the boot-loader unlocked in order to flash the ROM. You can also watch the video at the bottom to see this port in action.
source: XDA
We all understand there are things we do on our phones that will drain the battery faster. Streaming video, playing games, and using the GPS all cause the juice to flow out faster than we’d like. When we put our phone to sleep though, we expect the battery to drain very slowly. Software glitches can ruin that dream, sometimes emptying the battery in as little as a few hours. Researchers at Purdue have decided enough is enough, and set out to try to identify and mitigate the problems the bugs cause.
Read about what they found, and how they plan to fix it, after the break.
Android gaming is one step closer to becoming even more sweeter than it already is folks. Sony promised we would see an open beta for its Playstation SDK Suite this month, but we hadn’t seen anything about it until now. That means not just select developers in the U.S., U.K. and Japan, but all developers around the world can get right to it and use the program immediately. Developers will be able to find the tools needed at www.playstation.com/pss, which will give them the ability to create apps and games for Playstation-certified Android devices. The open beta is available now for all developers for the not-too-shabby price of free, though developers will have to sign a contract and pay a fee to use the Playstation SDK Suite after the open beta ends.
If you’re a developer and are interested in creating some snazzy apps and games through Sony, hit the source link for additional details. I’m sure there are more than a few owners of Sony devices who are eagerly awaiting the first creations from you all.
source: Playstation
via: AC
Dev’s are about to get an early Christmas gift as Google has announced a new revision to its SDK with a number of anticipated bug fixes as well as some new and improved features. You can expect to see some improvements in areas such as “Lint” and the emulator itself.
Lint is a static checker which analyzes Android projects for a variety of issues around correctness, security, performance, usability and accessibility, checking your XML resources, bitmaps, ProGuard configuration files, source files and even compiled bytecode. It can be run from within Eclipse or from the command line.
The list is extensive and a highly welcomed addition and revision to the current SDK. We hope to see great things from devs when new and improved tools are handed down to them. Check out the full list of features, revisions and improvements below, courtesy of Android SDK Tech, Xavier Ducrohet. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below. Read more
Like the Galaxy Nexus before it, the One X by HTC is already seeing root thanks to superboot files released before well, the phone even sees a release thanks to MoDaCo. Basically it’s a script that you run on your Linux, PC or Mac computer when the device is connected via the USB cable. What the script does is push the necessary root files to your device without the need for all those fancy ADB commands. It’s not as easy as a one-click root method but it isn’t as much of a process as using ADB.
Given that Android 4.0 is running on the One X with an ICS kernel it shouldn’t be too difficult to get custom ROMs and recoveries onto the device. Even though the bootloader is still locked my guess is that it will be added to the HTCDev site sometime shortly after it gets released. So while we will have to wait for the phone to release here in April for the UK and Europe and on AT&T this summer for the U.S. it’s nice to know that you’ll be able to root the device right out of the box. Hit the break below to find the instructions to do so as well as the file to download. Enjoy! Read more
It appears that SwiftKey is just getting better and better. Today the 3rd-party keyboard developer has announced in Barcelona that it will release the keyboard SDK for use by device and handset manufacturers. The SDK isn’t just for Android folks either as it will also be available for a slew of other OS’ including iOS, QNX/BlackBerry 10, OS X, Windows, etc. As Dr. Ben Medlock, CTO of SwiftKey puts it:
“As we are interacting with more devices, technology that accurately understands what a user is trying to say or do with their devices is vital. It only takes a cursory look at user groups to realize that typing is one of the biggest frustrations that people have on tablets and smartphones. The launch of our SDK will give OEMs access to better typing experience, with their own look and feel.”
So we can look forward to seeing SwiftKey on a whole bunch of different devices here in the future. You can hit the break below to check out the press release in full detail. It will be exciting to see how the software’s prediction capabilities work on something other than a phone or tablet down the road like for instance a SmartTV or an Ultrabook. What do you guys think? Read more
The adoption of Google Music has been dismal. Maybe it’s because we expect Google services to erupt like a volcano and immediately soar into the sky, blanketing the people below in Google awesome ash. Or maybe it’s because iTunes, Pandora and Slacker Radio already have a foothold ’round those parts. Or it could be that Google Music is only currently available in the U.S.
My guess is as good as yours, however there might be some sunshine on the horizon in the form of a developer, Simon Weber. Simon has been working on his unofficial Google Music API for a month, and has pretty much every functionality of the service coded into the API. Only one major implementation is missing at the moment: support for uploading formats other than .mp3. Unfortunately, however, the API is currently coded in Python, restricting it to desktop platforms. It isn’t impossible to port it to a mobile-friendly language though, and thankfully Aaron Gingrich of Android Police has put Simon in contact with CM9 [music player] Apollo developer Andrew Neal.
This could mean we see a port of the API to mobile platforms, pending the result of Neal and Weber’s collaboration. The only problem that will immediately come to mind reading “unofficial”, “Google”, and “API” is action taken by Google to, well, cease and desist. I don’t think that’s likely to happen, as Mr. Weber will be interning at Google this summer — possibly bringing official Google support for the API in the near future. This could be great news for Google Music, as integration into Android applications could surely inject some much needed life into the service’s disappointing adoption stats.
source: android police
Okay so I’ve always felt that the Android development community was on top of their game, but this is insane. Hours, HOURS, after Asus released the bootloader unlock tool for the Transformer Prime developers were able to get Clockwork Recovery and a CyanogenMod 9 build onto the device. This only suggests that the development community for this device is about to take off and grow exponentially. If you’re wanting to install the custom recovery on your Tegra 3 tablet then follow the following instructions: Read more
