Hi all!

For an early preview the quality of the Android SDK is not bad.

The current SDK is addressed to enthusiasts in the software industry and to individuals who want to participate in the Android Challenge.

It seems to be really too difficult for many people in the media to simply read what Google communicates through the official Android web site.

[quote] To help developers get started developing new applications, we're offering an early look at the Android Software Development Kit. [/quote]http://code.google.com/android/

Google has never announced that they are shipping a release candidate, so far I do not see any problem.

Everyone who complains about defect counts in a preview of a software product that will ship many,many months away in the future is in most cases a total idiot knowing not really much about the special project he is talking about and of software engineering in general.

Google has done something very brave and wise, most ordinary product managers would never ship development builds which are far away from a potential release candidate.

They have started listening to their customers a little more than a month ago in an quite early stage. They want to build the world's best mobile phone application infrastructure. They know that only if the consumers and developers agree that Android is "simply" the best choice, they will win. My opinion is that the Android team does a quite good job.

I am more concerned about how Google's marketing department and their legal department licensing is ruled by them not by Google's enthusiastic engineers. But that is a totally different story.

I do not want to initiate a flame war.

Java ME (formerly called J2ME) has a much more restricted API than Java SE and also than the brand new Android API, at least if we talk about Java ME/CLDC.

It is well known that rich APIs make the life of developers easier and sometimes it also reduces the skills required to create software products. From this point of view Android will enable more people to program mobile applications, that's definitely great.

But it is quite unfair to compare J2ME CLDC with Android, because both were engineered for different use-cases.

Java ME CLDC runs on devices with less powerful CPU's (do not expect a lot of fun on an Android phone running with a comparably slow 20 MHz processor ) and only a few MBytes of memory.

For all who are interested in Java ME on embedded devices, please take a look on the following
link:https://pia.khe.siemens.com/efiles/wireless/datasheets/TC65_Datasheet...

I have done some programming on it, it has "only" 400kB (, there are devices which have less). On such limited devices the memory footprint of the API and also of your own objects really matters!

On some embedded Java projects the runtime API also gets ripped down to save memory space. Programming such devices is done only by a very small fraction of engineers, they are specialists in their field, like game developers, have their very special skill-sets.

The most successful mobile game platform is till now Java ME, but perhaps Android will change that in a few years.

Comparing Java ME CLDC with Android is like comparing Microsoft DOS with Windows XP. That's silly.

Android will run on high-end smart phones and will offer a more PC like experience.

No one today will buy a modern PC to run DOS on it.

But are mobile phones becoming more and more like small PCs ?

Yes and no ! If you buy a 1000 Euro(/US$1500) phone you get something quite different from the 40 Euro (US$60) phone.

J2ME CLDC phones are starting at little more than 100 Euro (US$150). (My guess is that Android phones will at least cost 450 Euro.)

Cheers, George

On 20 Dez., 17:19, JP <Joac...@gmail.com> wrote: