Over the next several weeks, Android 1.6 will be rolling out to customers via an over-the-air update. In addition to a number of user-facing features such as a new Android Market and a faster camera application, the Donut branch has a few goodies for developers as well. This article explores how to get 1.6 right now, and the developer-facing features inside.

Can’t wait for the regular update? The 1.6 SDK is available for download now. It contains an emulator for a virtual Android device so you can develop and test your programs on your desktop machine. Windows, Linux, and MacOS are supported.

Want to see it running on a real phone? If you have an ADP1 or Google Ion phone, download the latest version from the HTC support site. Be sure to follow the link specifically for your hardware: Android Dev Phone 1, and Google I/O Device (Ion). I tried the directions for the Ion and they worked like a charm.

For other kinds of phones such as the T-Mobile G1 and MyTouch3G, Taylor Wimberly and Ben Marvin have written a couple of articles that have downloading and install instructions. Be sure to read all the warnings and comments about potential problems with a manual update, especially if you are running a custom or rooted Android ROM.

Now that you have 1.6, let’s look at the developer-facing changes in the new version.

1.6 is a minor release of Android, which means that there are only a handful of changes in the Android application programming interface (API). The official API diffs page lists 538 removals, additions, and other changes to the API between 1.5 (Cupcake) and 1.6 (Donut). However this number is misleading. When a class is deprecated in one place and moved to another, every method and field in the class is counted twice. So the actual number of changes is much lower. Here are the highlights:

• Support for multiple screen sizes and densities. Applications targeting 1.6 are assumed to support different screen densities and sizes. They can still explicitly specify screen support either way with the supports-screens manifest tag.
• New permissions. 1.6 programs must explicitly request the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission to be able to modify the contents of the SD card, and they must explicitly request the READ_PHONE_STATE permission to be able to be able to retrieve phone state info. Apps targeting earlier versions will always request these permissions implicitly.
• New audio sources. In 1.6, you can record audio from the VOICE_CALL, VOICE_DOWNLINK, and VOICE_UPLINK channels (hardware permitting).
• Path-based permissions. In 1.5 you either had full access or no access to all the paths exposed by a Content Provider. In 1.6 the developer can restrict access based on particular paths.
• Gesture strokes. Android 1.6 provides some limited support for defining gestures (distinctive finger movements) in your own applications. So far, none of the standard apps have taken advantage of this.
• WiFi multicast. This will make it possible for apps running on the same WiFi network to discover and talk to each other.
• OpenGL changes. Some of the classes in javax.microedition.khronos have been deprecated and moved to android.opengl. I’m not really sure they will stay there though, so there’s no urgency to change your code. More interesting are the hints that Android will be supporting OpenGL 2.0 in a future release. You can now specify the OpenGL version number that you require in your Android manifest.
• CDMA support. Unless you’re generating GSM/CDMA tones in your program you probably don’t care about this.
• android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES. Before making a call to a new API, you can test to see which version of Android you are running on.

By far, the most important change in 1.6 is support for different screen sizes. This is the only change in 1.6 that most developers need to worry about. 1.6 is the first release that can really support screens that are larger or smaller than the standard 320×480 HVGA display that has been used so far on all Android phones. The first phone to take advantage of this will likely be the HTC Tatoo, which will have a 240×320 screen. The Motorola Sholes/Tao, due out later this year, will have a 480×800 screen, and some netbooks will use 480×854 or bigger.

When running an older application on a 1.6 phone, Android will attempt to scale the user interface to the new size. However, it doesn’t always do a great job of this. Small screens are particularly difficult to support so on those phones Google decided to limit the Market so that 1.5 apps will not even appear in the list of available applications users can download. So it’s important that all Android programs be updated sooner or later to target the new version. In a future article I’ll explore how you can have a single program that support multiple screen sizes and versions of Android.

by Ed Burnette

[via ZDNet]

Android OS 1.6, codenamed “Donut”, has been released to application developers with relatively little fanfare, at least in comparison to the previous 1.5 “Cupcake” version. The list of new features suggests the public release will grab a little more attention from users; it includes a series of large fixes, frequently-requested additions, and a few surprises.

Possibly the most single requested feature for the Android platform, native multi-touch support, has been confirmed both as hardware support primarily for upcoming devices such as the HTC Hero and as software emulation. Many third-party applications will need to be updated to support multitouch gesture control, but it shouldn’t be long before they start popping up on the Android Market considering it’s been such a consistently requested feature.

The Android Market itself will be getting a facelift, including a new UI and more finely grained control for listing and searching apps. New categories will debut that should help developers list their apps more effectively. And to help visibility, the new version of the Market will give users the ability to search apps by cost and release date and show screen shots in app descriptions.

A quick-search bar has been added providing the ability to search both web content and the handset simultaneously, from the home screen (similar to Universal Search on Palm’s webOS). Quick-search includes handset contacts and responds to voice commands for both searching and placing calls. The quick-search bar includes the ability to index third-party app content, however users may add or remove the service on a per-app basis.

Multilingual text-to-speech support is now available to developers, so expect your Android handset to start talking to you shortly. Especially interesting is that the text-to-speech, in addition to being multi-lingual (English and German for now), seems to support multiple tertiary localizations (for example UK vs. US English).

The new display scaling feature only confirms the rumors: Android is moving into the PMP, netbook, and tablet markets (we’ve already seen it on an Archos tablet). Display scaling will allow the same UI used on Android handsets to be applied to larger-format devices without compromising either the multi-desktop approach or overall graphical fidelity.

Android 1.6 will also reportedly support CDMA handsets, which may not mean much to users that already own Android handsets, but for developers it ultimately means more Android users.

The HTC Hero for Sprint is the first Android handset to run OS 1.6. Reviews of the Hero have mainly been positive, but there’s a consensus that it is somewhat sluggish. And be sure to read PC World’s full review of the HTC Hero.

by Chris Head

[via PCWorld]

Android is getting sweeter

With the release of Android 1.6 a.k.a. “Donut”, Android continues its path towards main-stream mobile acceptance

For the past year I’ve been watching Android mature — and waiting. After finishing the Android book earlier in the year I’ve done a little with it, but to be candid, most of my mobile development cycles have been spent focused on some other platforms — platforms that are shipping like iPhone and BlackBerry. Yes, I am probably guilty of lacking vision by not entering applications into the Developer Challenges. And perhaps I should have been laying the foundation for a future Android application which will take over the world when more devices appear on the market. And I’m guilty of countless other things, but unfortunately the tyranny of the urgent tends to still dominate my professional world. Things are going to change. Both for my time management focus and the Android horizon. I won’t bore you here and now with how things in my world are going to change, but I will give you some insight to what is happening in the Android space. Now before you get too excited, I don’t exactly have an inside track to the things happening at the Open Handset Alliance, nor do I have anyone at Google on my speed-dial. I don’t even have an updated piece of hardware — yet! I am just reading the touch-screen tea leaves and want to share a few observations.

The Android 1.6 SDK was released last week — this is the code branch named “Donut”. For a while it was thought that this might be version “2.0″, but alas, it was released as 1.6. This version of the Android code will be available on devices starting as early as October, if the rumors are to be believed. Sprint is introducing a device, the Hero from HTC and other devices are anticipated for this year’s Christmas season. Of particular note to mobile market watchers, Sprint now has two compelling attributes. With the addition of Android to their line-up, they have the broadest variety of smart-phone class devices including BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, and Android. Sprint also has arguably the best service plan with their $99 all-you-can-eat voice, data and messaging plan which they call SimplyEverything. This is not meant to be a Sprint commercial, but for someone like myself who is constantly needing to get their hands on devices for writing and testing custom applications, these features did not go unnoticed. For the record, I am using AT&T. My wife received a hand-me-down 4GB iPhone after I burned through it in a couple of days two summers ago. I drained the battery to an unusable level each of the first two days I had it and just couldn’t cope with the fact that I couldn’t swap a new battery into it like I had done with my Palm Treo. So now I bounce around between an unlocked Android phone and a well-worn BlackBerry Curve. Whose network is best? Topic for another day. Let’s get back to Android and see what new features Donut brings us and what that might mean for Android watchers around the globe.

Major Features in 1.6

There are a number of new features in 1.6 — however, I am going to break them up into two main categories. You might classify them yourself another way, but the way I see it, they fall into two major thems. The first I’ll dub “Enabling New Markets” and the second category, “Cool Programmer Stuff”. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

To date, the Android platform has supported GSM wireless networks and a pretty static hardware set — or to be fair, more of a “build it for this device” approach. With 1.6 we now see that the Telephony capabilites have been expanded to also include CDMA networks. In North America, this means that Android can now play on networks such as Verizon, Sprint and Alltell, among others. I don’t mean to exclude anyone here of course, but those are some of the big names in the CDMA space. Verizon and Sprint have tremendous EV-DO (i.e. super fast 3G) data networks. And Verizon has oodles of subscribers so supporting CDMA is a big boost for Android from a “grab some marketshare” perspective in the United States.

The other area in which this new release of Android plays into new markets is that multiple screen dimension and depths are now supported. This means that if the computing power is there to support Android, we can expect to see it running on a variety of hardware profiles. This could mean a larger (aka brick-like) device like the G1 or more sleek handsets closer to the razor or other higher-function feature phones. I’ve been reprimanded before on expecting too much from lower end hardware, but I’m patient. The key lesson here is that these different devices can and will have different display characteristics. Now applications can work with multiple layouts by interrogating the display properties at run-time and taking the appropriate action. The action might mean changing the layout to a lower-res game scene, running in a higher resolution, or perhaps just refusing to run at all unless the minimum requirements are met. It is arguably better to not permit your application to run than have a knowingly poor user experience. If you are interested in learning more about this specific API, you can read about DisplayMetrics at the Android Developer website.

So as of Android 1.6, Android can now play on both GSM and CDMA networks and on a range of device display characteristics. Now we’re talking! Android is a significant step closer to prime-time and coming to a market near you. So let’s have a look at what other goodies are included in 1.6.

Cool Stuff

Android has added some neat stuff to the SDK — some things that bring Android closer to both the desktop and the defacto mobile leader — the popular iPhone. Close the desktop? Have I lost my mind? Perhaps, but check this out — Android 1.6 has expanded the Quick Search Browser (QSB) capabilities that has been around since 1.1. I am sure you have started typing a search phrase into your desktop browser and you see the “suggested” phrases show up? If you’re like me, you might even start typing just to see what you should search on prior to hitting “Go” on the search form. In 1.6, Android continues to improve this functionality. One of my concerns with Android versus other platforms such as Palm’s webOS and iPhone is that while Android may be a beefier, flexible and capable OS, the user experience can be a bit Windows Mobile-ish. Before you start throwing old stylii at me, let me explain. Android can be a little “click and clack” intensive compared to the user interface of iPhone and webOS. However, with an increasingly effective search tool built in to the home-screen, not only does the web become more accessible, but data on the device is very accessible.

In case you are not familiar with QSB, here is how it works. Android is constantly monitoring what the user is doing. If a website was visited, a contact was touched, or an application was launched, this data pattern is “learned” and becomes more relevant in search results. Additionally, third party applications can also expose a ContentProvider whereby the application’s data can be searched by the QSB. This brings a whole new level of user experience to a mobile device. Ready for a little confession? The QSB can also be a poor-man’s dictionary, right? Have you ever typed a word into Google’s search box just to see if you spelled it correctly? OK, so I’m the only one. So this is just the long winded way to say that 1.6 improves the Quick Search Browser functionality — most notably the search suggestions capabilities. See the SearchManager reference for more details.

The other comment I made — that Android may be moving closer to iPhone-like functionality comes in the form of a user interface package which has been added in 1.6 called: android.gesture. Developers can record, store, retrieve and generally speaking, manage gestures. Gestures are essentially a collection of screen interactions — “strokes” or collections of MotionEvents. After reviewing the API (and not actually using it yet….), I get the feeling that this is more of a tool-kit than a simple iPhone-like “TouchEvent” that gets sent to your application. While Android developers would not be blamed for wanting more in this area, it is an incrementally encouraging step in the right direction. It also may allow some interesting “art” or enable new unique password & keygen capabilities for applications?

Some other cool items in this cut of the SDK include:

• Using Linux Kernel 2.6.29
• Improved Camera performance
• Updated OpenCore media engine
• VPN management capabilities — can you say “Enterprise Network Access”?
• Android.accessibility package permits an application to track events taken by the user
• Expanded animation and graphics features — some related to the varied display layouts previously mentioned and others simply to add capabilities.
• Text to Speech capabilities found in the android.speech.tts package. Add this to the existing Speech Recognition capabilities and this has the potential to significantly enrich the mobile experience.
• SmsManager — improves Android text messaging capabilities
• Additional flexibility in AndroidManifest.xml — the deployment descriptor for Android applications.
• Improved Android Market experience for easier shopping

A frog in boiling water?

So, just what does all of this mean for Android and for competing platforms? From my vantage point, this is a significant milestone — one that the other platforms should be mindful of — particularly in the area of new market potential that CDMA capabilities bring to Android. The other features are excellent and will only turn up the heat for competitors. Slowly but surely the temperature is rising and with it, the stock of Android.

Frank Ableson is an entrepreneur, writer and mobile software developer who probably should have been a hardware designer, but soldering got in the way. Frank’s technical interests are in mobile and embedded computing. Frank is the lead author of Unlocking Android, an intermediate text on software development for the Android platform.

[via Linux Magazine]

Google’s Android OS is coming on strong and gobs of Android devices are starting to hit the market. As more Android devices are available for consumers, more developers will want to focus on the platform. Google has now released the SDK for the latest version of Android dubbed donut.

Remember when Cupcake Arrived? Well now the tasty dessert has a friend of its own kind – a larger than life Donut next to the Robot and Cupcake is at Googleplex!

This was sent in to Phandroid by Daniel@Google – Thanks Man! As I told him, we’ve been HECTIC over here trying to cover the Cliq. This is a fun change of pace that put a smile on my face. I’m also kind of glad that Moto only announced  one phone because otherwise my head would explode from all the rushed writing/recording/picture-taking/uploading/etc…!

Let the highly irritating “Not funniez prank – When Can I Haz My Donuts?!?!?!” comments begin! (BTW the above picture is NOT a prank, you can see how they made that original Cupcake if you please.)

[via Phandroid]

A few days ago we reported that while the G1 will likely continue to get minor updates and bug fixes, the evolutionary updates (Cupcake => Donut => Eclair) might be over. Noting a tweet from a Google Engineer himself, things certainly didn’t look good. The cause for worrying has been blown out of proportion and greatly exaggerated according to a tweet from a different Android engineer, Dan Morrill.

Great news! Although the word “demise” could be analyzed many different ways. Demise would mean the phone is dead in the water and ceases to do what it should. Obviously that ain’t happenin, especially since Android Market inherently means the phone’s capabilities continue to grow.

Here is what I think: regardless of whether or not future versions of the Android Development branch are added to the G1 and downloaded via OTA updates, Google will continue to maintain development branches BEYOND the most current device. They could be patches and bug fixes or maybe even new features and inclusions.

We all obsess over what phone is BEST packing the HIGHEST specs at a price that is obtainable if not affordable. But Android wasn’t only meant for the ultra-high-end handset that all of us crave. It was also meant to take consumers from the low to mid-range handset and give them smartphone features. So, I think that the idea here is that whether or not future phones have higher powered builds of Android is beyond the point – the G1 will continue to be maintained and groomed as OTHER Android devices, perhaps with even lowlier specs, will be launched in the future.

You’re probably reading this thinking, “Yeah, but I have a G1 and I want Donut.” Morrill’s tweet does little to reassure us that the G1 will get Donut, but G1 owners might not be out of luck just yet. The main cause of concern is that with the Cupcake update, the G1’s internal memory is filled to the brim, leaving little room for OS upgrades that would pack on any measurable features. Cyanogen, Android hacker extraordinaire, believes that barrier can be easily knocked down:

I recently spoke with Steve Kondik (aka Cyanogen) who has released his own customized builds of Android. He told me that Donut builds were a few megabytes larger when compared with Cupcake, but new compression methods were able to shrink the total install up to 10 percent. “I don’t think that Donut is going to have any problems fitting on the G,” he said “To make it smaller, I use a tool called optipng which analyzes PNG images and finds the optimal compression for them. Apps can be significantly reduced in size by using this tool and applying better compression to the package itself.”

The “I” in the above quote is from Taylor Wimberly who posted his findings in a CNET article. In addition to this hopeful account, it seems that “Donut” might officially be Android 1.6 when all is said and done. That is, if Wimberly’s analysis about the appearance of the OS in mobile analytics is accurate:

So there you have it:

• The G1 isn’t dead
• The G1 will continue to get necessary updates at worst, and could likely get larger scale feature updates as well
• Donut could still come to the G1
• Donut might = 1.6 (Not 2.0, we love you Tyler)

Alright G1 owners… sound off!

[via Phandroid]