Android 1.5 First Look

I just got the official release of Android 1.5 onto my ADP. And I'm loving it. I think it's a phenomenal upgrade, and here's a few features that really caught my eye.

Video camera - hell yes! It's been less than a year since the G1 release, and cupcake has video recording on it (iPhone 3.0 - still don't know if it has video recording). The quality isn't half bad either. Best part is, they've made it really easy to take a video, and instantly share it. You can either email it through gmail, the mail application, send it via mms, or upload it to YouTube.

Virtual keyboard - awesome! This really should have been in there a long time ago, but at least it's here now. I actually prefer the Android virtual keyboard to the iPhone's because it vibrates very subtly when you tap keys. I also prefer the suggestive text to the iPhone's auto correct. Another win for Android here.

Automatic screen orientation switching. Again, this probably should have been in to begin with. It works great, just as you'd expect. I never really liked this feature on the iPhone though - it never changes when I want it to, but quite often changes when I don't want it to. From my brief toying around with the feature, the Android does it slightly better, but still not good enough for me to have it turned on.

They've also made a few changes to the default UI for Android. There's some texturing going on now. Looks nicer. Nothing major though.

From a developer's perspective, this update introduces several new features to the SDK. I personally haven't tried and tested any of them yet, but will do so in the near future. When I get on it, I'll be sure to write about it.

If you're a 1.1 or earlier developer, you may be made a little unhappy by this update. They've changed the minimum size for some UI elements (Buttons for instance). So if you were relying on "wrap_content" to make your UI look just right, you may have to redo it. Not really sure why they did that.

All in all, I think this is a pretty phenomenal update. If you haven't already gotten it, get it now and you won't regret it.

-Sir Lapog Kahn.

Upgrading ADP to Android 1.5

If you don't already know, Android 1.5 is now officially released. The "official" way to get it onto your ADP is written about here. However, there seems to be an error with the javascript on that webpage and therefore, you can't download any of the images (until they fix it - if they fix it and I don't update this post, please let me know via comments/email). This got me really pissed off and took me to #android-dev to ask for help. And I did get help. I'd imagine that there are quite a few people who are frustrated by this, so I figured I'd write about how to get your hands on the updates.

Update: The page appears to have been fixed. I had emailed HTC support reporting the error, and they replied to me within 24 hours saying the page had been fixed. I am very impressed with their efficiency. Hats off to you HTC.

It's pretty simple really. You use wget to get the files directly, setting the referer to the link itself. Here is the exact command. Wait for the files to download. To ensure that the files are the right ones, you may want to do a checksum.

Once you get the files, go ahead and follow the instructions on the page mentioned above. They worked fine for me. However, I have read about a few people having problems with adb not recognizing the device. Keep in mind that you don't have to go through adb as mentioned on the HTC page. You just need to get the relevant updates onto the SD card with the name of update.zip - you can do this with Windows Explorer, Finder, Nautilus (or whatever it is you use) if you prefer doing it that way.

If you're having trouble with adb, try this instead:

Mount the phone's SD card onto your computer somehow (either through the USB cable, or by plugging it in directly). Once you've done that, copy the updates (one by one, as mentioned in the tutorial) on to the SD card, and rename it to update.zip (irrespective of what update it is). Then follow the instructions on the HTC page. This hopefully should circumvent any adb problems.

That should be all you need to get Android 1.5 onto your ADP. Have fun with it!