anyone here written Android Apps or hacked the OS?

I'm getting slightly deeper into this now, but putting my brand new Elocity A7+ into a an endless loop only 14 hours after I bought it is starting to make me think twice about such activity.

A developer is running ICS on his ...partially with no touch screen , using a mouse and I'm thinking of trying to move in the same direction.

OH BTW.....Yes my A7+ is running again.....didn't even mention it to my wife until I got it fixed !!

Dan

I've barely poked my nose into native apps. Market fragmentation means writing an iOS app, an Android app, Windows Phone app, and maybe even a Blackberry app -- and then risking that the platform maker will change all the rules under you at whim. (Android is somewhat less subject to that because of its widespread adoption and Android's design/dev principles, but hardware fragmentation is a balancing factor there.) So far, for my existing clients, getting a phone-friendly version of their sites has been more pressing.

With market and platform fragmentation in mind, depending on what you want to do, you may find that developing a web app for mobiles is a good way to serve as many people as gracefully as possible with the least amount of agony.

If so, you may well find jQuery Mobile to be helpful. It makes designing app-like web pages and services a lot easier by giving the developer a flexible/scalable/modifiable/reskinnable UI. If your needs are simple, it's pretty easy to hook the UI up to various forms of content. If your needs are more complex, it looks like you could develop a data-driven web app with a minimum of pain and suffering with the JQM UI and a little server side PHP/MySQL.

http://jquerymobile.com/

"...didn't even mention it to my wife until I got it fixed !!"

Done that

The next phone I will get will be android, as it looks like they are a lot funner to develop on. I have worked with people who do the app stuff, and it is up on my radar of crap that I want to do, but haven't gotten into yet and I'm still on an iPhone 3g (I ride the tires off stuff).

I agree with b2b that web-based apps are a lot easier to develop.... unless you need platform specific features or to make the info available offline, there's no reason not to just make a responsively designed html site. Of course, if you .do. need local storage or access to platform stuff, then you gotta.

I'm starting to get my head really around Linux (it helps to do some battles with setting up Amazon EC2 stuff ), and from what I can tell, it's a lot less of a step up for me to get into dev. apps for android as opposed to iOS, mostly becasue I don't currently own a mac.

The responsive design movement appeals to me on one level (the code-once part of me likes it plenty ) -- and, of course, to the extent you take mobiles into consideration for a design, it must be responsive to a wide variety of screen sizes -- but I think I'm still sitting on the dual development path fence for now. So far, most of the responsive design sites (basically a code-once-for-desktop-and-mobile approach for you non-web dudes) I've explored seem to often look a bit clunky on desktop browsers. For now, I'm leaning on a dual platform approach going forward, designing the best desktop site I can and offering a limited mobile-friendly version with a link back to the main site for full featured browsing of content that doesn't make sense on the small screen. But, down the road, for sure, I think write-once/run-anywhere (or at least the web equiv) is the future -- the efforts of certain proprietary interests in manipulating the standards processes notwithstanding.

PS... Yep, it's hard to develop for a proprietary system you don't have in hand. That is for sure. And you can add Windows Phone to the mix, too, from what the tech blabberatti seem to be saying. Remember those halcyon days only 4 or 5 years ago when we thought we were entering an era of stable, broadly adopted standards that would mean the end of browser fragmentation and the ability to code your HTML and CSS to a single, universal standard? I believe the proper response is bwahahahaha!

okay I just installed honeycomb on this and right now I'm testing google speak. yes it works.... !

Have you found a way to get audio into it other than with the built-in mic and get audio out other than the headphone jack? Does the multi-pin connector carry audio, either analog or digital? If it doesn't, that might explain why there aren't any decent audio applications for. The keep telling me to wait a whiie, but I'm afraid that if I wait too long it won't be worth enough to get me an iPod.

Write a good SPL meter for it. Or a good recorder.

this has a built in mic when I go to type it automatically records my voice

this elocity a7+ came with android 2.2 now I have honeycomb. i installed update-zip

dan