About two weeks ago, I bought the Android Dev Phone 1. Its essentially the T-Mobile G1, but with all the debugging extras, and totally unlocked (SIM unlocked, bootloader unlocked, and rooted). I have been using it as my regular phone, since if I am to develop for the platform, I have to know about the user experience. I need to know what other apps do and look like, and what some users may come to experience from applications in general.
The Good:
The Android SDK is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X (Intel), and there is also an Eclipse plugin which is awesome. The Android app project has some weirdness to it, in that there is a Java class that is automagically modified and compiled, and its job is to manage programatic access to things like images, configuration files, sounds, etc. It works well, too. And when you select "Run", it will compile, bundle, and deploy to the phone over USB, and start the application! Very nice. The automatic syncing with Google for contact information is very handy.
The Bad:
The phone's Bluetooth is a joke. My Mac reports no Bluetooth services (profiles). No dial-up networking, no file transfer, nothing! But it does work over Bluetooth with my car, and unlike my Nokia N95, my car can now access the phone's contacts.
The Ugly:
The Eclipse plugin has a UI to develop the XML file which defines the layout of the actual application. This is a good thing, but the XML layout is SO DAMN COMPLICATED I can't get anything done. The documentation is sparse and doesn't explain what goes where and how to make it all go together. Example, why can't the GridLayout have sub-items, yet the List and Table Layouts can have sub-items? How am I supposed to do anything basic, like draw a Tic-Tac-Toe board? I mean just DRAW the board, not even worry about functionality at this point. This is going to be a significant learning curve, and is a far cry from the ease that is the Interface Builder for Mac OS X & iPhone applications! I felt the need to buy a book on Amazon, hopefully it will be a good purchase, it had some good reviews.
Stay tuned!
