Archive for category Android

Debugging into Android Source Code

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, Coding on April 29th, 2010

Over a year ago I described how to get Android Source on Windows and also later pointed to Brad Chou’s script.

However, what if you want to go one step further and debug into the code from your applications? Attaching Android platform source in Eclipse provides a great tutorial. There are even some pre-created zip files for Cupcake (1.5), Donut (1.6) and Eclair (2.1) containing the Android source code.

Built-in Testing App

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, Coding on April 27th, 2010

If you are an Android mobile developer you might find the following built-in  test app screens useful. To get to them type *#*#4636#*#* from the phone app. I have just tried this on the G1 and Droid and it works on both.
testingphoneinfobatteryinfo1battery-historyusagestats

Android Forensics

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, Coding on April 21st, 2010

sansI have been doing a feasibility study for a client on how to remotely obtain various kinds of phone state for instances where their end-users needs customer support.

In doing so, I came across an interesting site on Android Digital Forensics. There’s some open source code that uses the many ContentProviders to extract information from the phone.

Copy Protection

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android on April 19th, 2010

androidmarket1Last week I mentioned that some people, with the latest devices, couldn’t view my apps.

One solution is to switch copy protection ‘off’ in the developer console. The downside of this that it makes your app easier to copy. Whatever you do, don’t set it ‘off’ and then ‘on’ again. As this post shows, this will create serious difficulties for your legitimate users.

Android Market API

Posted by Simon Judge, Freelance Mobile Developer in Android, Android Market, Coding on April 16th, 2010

androidmarketapiI have been investigating how to gain programmatic access to the Android Market. There’s no official API but obviously it’s possible because of the many Android app catalog web sites.

There’s a useful (but incomplete) Java implementation called android-market-api as well as an article on how to download market applications without the vending app.

Also, don’t forget, on the phone you can simply reference an application using the following link for the following form:

market://search?q=pname:com.simonjudge.database

(obviously change to point to your app)