The update doesn’t change any of the Android APIs or introduce any new ones. Eclipse users don’t need to update the ADT plug-in either. Once you’ve unzipped the file on your machine, you will want to update things like your PATH variable and, if you’re using Eclipse, the SDK location setting for ADT (hint: Preferences > Android).

Notice that if you did not yet upgrade from m3 to m5, you might take a look at the upgrade instructions and then the API changes overview. For even more details on the changes, there is an API differences report.

No big changes should be expected after the m5 release and the major API change in the SDK, in the next months at least. There will be more bug fixes and API improvments until we get hands on the first Android Handset.

Read also :

• Look inside Android, Day one
• Android SDK Launched for developers
• Tips: Howto Connect Android Emulator behind proxy
• Tips: Change Android Emulator Skin

Highlighted features in this release :

• New user interface - totally remodeled interface, new design and icons, looks much better.
• Layout animations - Developers can now create layout animations for their applications using the capabilities introduced in the android.view.animation package
• Geo-coding - android.location.Geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.
• New media codecs - The MediaPlayer class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.
• Search Manager - A new search API is now available android.app.SearchManager, providing the ability to to search for user, system or network based data, making search a seamless, system-wide feature.
• Updated Eclipse plug-in - A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience. In particular, check out the new Android Manifest editor.

Something very interesting in the new interface is the new menus. Now it is more iphone-like - if I can say - Menus have been iconized which make it easier for touchscreen phones, and we can see the blurred menus by the end, so you can scroll down/up to see more menu options. To dig into the new Android interface here is some screenshots from the new SDK :

Home of the Android Platform

Android dialer

Android Dev Tools

Browser Menu replaced by icons

By clicking on more you get the entire menu

Android New Contact

Android Call Manager

Ready to go ? download the new Android SDK, read M5 announcement on the Developers blog.

Read also :

• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• Android Developer Challenge Deadline Extended
• Second Android SDK Update m3-rc37a
• Look inside Android, Day one

• The ability to inject SMS messages into the emulator, which will allow you to more easily test IntentReceivers for incoming SMS messages (Telnet to Android then run: sms senderPhoneNumber senderPhoneNumber)
• Android Debug Bridge (ADB) supports multiple emulators on one host computer
• The audio problem with the emulator on Windows should be fixed
• There’s a new emulator control panel that you can use to control network events like radio state changes and incoming calls.
• The Eclipse plugin now does color syntax highlighting on the XML files, such as AndroidManifest.xml
• The new default skin for the emulator is HVGA, portrait mode. That’s the one you should focus on for your submissions for the Android Developer Challenge.

It seems there are problems with com.google.android.providers.media in this release, others are reporting that many applications are not running such contacts, maps, browser and even Xmpp settings. Here all applications are working fine and I’m able to emulate phone call, but not sending sms. We’ll try to update you as we get more information on the subject.

More changes on the release notes, and you can download the latest Android SDK release from Google code. Be sure to update the ADT Eclipse Plugin as usual, instructions available for upgrading the SDK.

Read also :

• Android Developer Challenge Deadline Extended
• Tips: How to install apk files on Android Emulator
• Android SDK m5-rc14 Released
• First Android Campfire, Next week at the Googleplex

The Android team was very helpful over the discussions groups and answered a lot of technical questions around the platform, when answers are required. David posted some good reading over the official blog that you might check, but here I’ll post some blogs on Android and OHA launched this week, where you can find more news on the platform :

1. Android Portal
2. Hello Android
3. OHAdev.com

Got a blog or a website on Android ? Add it in comments.

Read also :

• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• McObject Sharpens its Edge in Database Indexes With New KD-Tree
• Interview with Adriano Chiaretta from iambic
• Weekly Android Applications 12/2/2008

Application Framework

The application Framework enable Android application to reuse and replace existent components. The Framework include Activity Manager, Window manager, Content providers, View system, notification manager, package manager, telephony manager, resource manager, location manager and XMPP service.

Android Libraries

Android system is based on set of C/C++ libraries used by various components of the Android system. Core libraries include :

• System C library- a BSD-derived implementation of the standard C system library (libc), tuned for embedded Linux-based devices
• Media Libraries- based on PacketVideo’s OpenCORE; the libraries support playback and recording of many popular audio and video formats, as well as static image files, including MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, and PNG
• Surface Manager- manages access to the display subsystem and seamlessly composites 2D and 3D graphic layers from multiple applications
• LibWebCore- a modern web browser engine which powers both the Android browser and an embeddable web view
• SGL- the underlying 2D graphics engine
• 3D libraries- an implementation based on OpenGL ES 1.0 APIs; the libraries use either hardware 3D acceleration (where available) or the included, highly optimized 3D software rasterizer
• FreeType- bitmap and vector font rendering
• SQLite- a powerful and lightweight relational database engine available to all applications

Dalvik Virtual Machine

Dalvik is the Java Virtual Machine that power Android systems, optimized for mobile phones, owned by google, and best of all going to be open sourced ! Dalvik executes files in the .dex format optimized for minimal footprint. The system itself is optimized to run multiple Dalvik VMs efficiently.

Android applications

The current SDK released came with a set of applications including Home, browser (based on webkit), contacts manager, Phone application, Maps, XMPP client, and according to documentation there will be also sms application, calendar and many others. I bet there will be other basic applications by Google such notes application, some games … etc, but the big job is left here for developers who will participate in the challenge.

Development tools

Android SDK, released this monday is defintely the best development environnement for Android applications. A plugin for eclipse is available to help coding, debugging, memory and performance profiling, in addition to the device emulator to see your application running live in Android before to see it on real handsets.

Some others Android’s Technical features

• Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification
• Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
• GSM Telephony
• Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi
• Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer

Be sure to check Android documentation to learn more about this new technology.

Read also :

• Running C++ Native Applications on Android, The Final Point
• Weekly Android Applications 24/12/2007
• Android is even better with Esmertec
• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15

The dual processor chipsets aims to reduce the development costs by supporting more features for the handset. The MSM7200 Chipset features include :

• Supports WCDMA/HSUPA and EGPRS networks
• Multimedia Broadcasting Multicast Service (MBMS)
• Integrated ARM11™ applications processor and ARM9™ modem
• QDSP4000™ and QDSP5000™ high-performance digital signal processors (DSP)
• 528 MHz ARM11 Jazelle™ Java® hardware acceleration
• Support for BREW® and Java applications
• Qcamera™: Up to 6.0 megapixel digital images
• Qtv™: Playback at 30 fps VGA
• Qcamcorder™: Record at 30 fps VGA
• Q3Dimension™: Up to 4 million triangles per second, and 133 million depth-tested, textured 3D pixels per second fill rate
• gpsOne® position-location assisted-GPS (A-GPS) solution
• Support for Linux® and other third-party operating systems
• Digital audio support for MP3, aacPlus™ and Enhanced aacPlus
• Integrated Mobile Digital Display Interface (MDDI), Bluetooth® 1.2 baseband processor and WiFi support

So all of these features should be available in your future GPhone, in addition to what Android will provide as software solution. Until the first handset will be available for public in the second half of 2008, the only way to try Android’s applications is using the emulator.

Read also :

• Tips: Get an iPhone Skin for your Android
• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• McObject Sharpens its Edge in Database Indexes With New KD-Tree
• Interview with Adriano Chiaretta from iambic

I just didn’t like the emulator so much, but I guess there will be more amazing devices in the future. So as development platform it’s very fine, I just have to be more familiar with the navigation pad.

So back to Android platform, the home screen show the browser in the middle screen, which based on Webkit, then three major applications included with the system Contacts manager, Recent calls and Maps in addition to sample demos. Below the full list as shown in Android. I still don’t know much on installing applications, and how to make more personalisations, but with such great documentation I guess this would be for the next days.

There is a special page on Youtube showing Android talks, and I stopped at the first video where Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz showing some of the main features. Steve showed something that I didn’t know how to try on the emulator, which is the text notifications. It’s a small chat application where you can receive notifications from your friends. I noticed xmpp settings in the system so I guess it is for gmail chat, or other jabber servers.

Well, that’s all for today. We’ll make certainly more experiments in the next days to get to know Android better.

Read also :

• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• Android SDK Launched for developers
• Tips: Howto Connect Android Emulator behind proxy
• Tips: Change Android Emulator Skin

As we were expecting in the previous post, the development platform is around Eclipse. An eclipse plugin is available to help developing and debugging Android’s applications. Android documenation is very well done and include all the necessary from requirements, to getting started, developping applications, references informations, until sample code. In addition to the API demo showing the SDK capabilities, two demo applications are available with sources : Lunar Lander game and a simple notepad application.

Android Challenge: $10 million to give away

With the announcement of Android SDK, the alliance offered $10 million for developers in a challenge to finance developments and certainly encourage getting more amazing applications in a very short time. There will be in total 50 winners and getting each one from $25k, to $100k or $275k. This is not just for fun I’m sure, the challenge will be in two parts. In the first part, submissions will be accepted from January 2 through March 3, 2008, and the second part will be after the first handsets built on the platform become available sometimes in the second half of 2008.

You can build any kind of applications from from Social networking, Media consumption, management, editing, or sharing, e.g., photos, Productivity and collaboration such as email, IM, calendar, etc., Gaming, News and information, Rethinking of traditional user interfaces, Use of mash-up functionality, Use of location-based services, Humanitarian benefits, Applications in service of global economic development, to Whatever you’re excited about!

This will certainly bring amazing applications to Android and slow down development for other platforms by loosing some open source mobile developers.

Conclusion

Overall, I think that Android succeeded its launch, the time to get more familiar with the SDK and the platform, you might check the new Android developers blog, and official dev group to ask questions and meet the Android team. Also the time to finish my download and get the SDK working on my laptop. Amazing but true, the open mobile platform is already here !

Read also :

• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• Look inside Android, Day one
• Android Developer Challenge Deadline Extended
• Android Developer Challenge Open