BANGALORE, INDIA: The whole of last year there were speculations about Google coming up with its own mobile phone, termed as GPhone. But last November, the air was cleared of all rumors when Open Handset Alliance (OHA) released Android, a complete set of software for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.

The OHA is a group of 34 leading multinational companies, including leading mobile operators, handset manufacturers, software companies, semiconductor companies and commercial companies. They had teamed up to develop a mobile phone that could give richer and more cohesive experience to users. And Google, as a member of the alliance has released Android SDK for the Android platform. Using this SDK, developers would be able to create mobile applications that would be able to harness all features of a handset.

For example, apps could be created to call upon a phone's core functionality like making calls, sending SMSes, accessing the calendar or even using the camera as a utility. In this article, we will tell you about Android and how to use it for developing mobile applicatoins.


Getting started

The Android SDK has been distributed with this month's PCQ_Professional CD. In Windows, only XP and Vista are supported. Other platforms supported by Android SDK are Linux and Mac OS X. To start application development you would also need Java SDK and Eclipse IDE. Android requires JDK 5 or later to work. Previous versions of JDK and even the Java Runtime Environment are not sufficient for it. Plus, it supports Eclipse 3.2 or 3.3 (Europa) for developing the mobile apps. Once you have installed your JDK and configured Eclipse IDE, you can straightaway start up with Android development. For this article we used JDK 6 and Europa as the IDE on a Vista machine.

Extract the contents of the zipped Android SDK to a folder. When you expand the directory you will find three folders: samples, docs and tools. You have to give the same directory path to the Tools folder as the path for environment variables. Once you have configured the path entry for system environment variables, you can start configuring the Android plugin for Eclipse. Start Eclipse and from Help > Software Updates > Find and Install, you can download and install the Android plugin. In the next window select the option 'Search for New features to Install,' and click on Next. Then on Install window, select New Remote Site and in the New Update Site dialog box enter the name as Android and URL as follows:

Select the checkbox for Android development tools, which will download and install Android plugins for Eclipse IDE

https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/ eclipse/

Click OK and the Android entry is added to the search list on the main window. Now press Finish to proceed with the search for the Eclipse updates. In the subsequent Search Result dialog box, select the checkbox Android > developer > Android Development Tools (ADT) and then click Next to proceed with the download. In the subsequent window accept the agreement and click Next button, while in the last window press Finish.

The ADT is not signed and while installation asks for acceptance, select 'Install All' to complete the download and installation process. Once installed, Eclipse restarts for the plugin to configure up. Now we can proceed up with Android development process within the Eclipse IDE, but before that we need to set Eclipse Preferences to point to the Android SDK directory. This can be configured by selecting Window > Preferences, and later clicking on Android on the left panel. In the main panel, browse for the SDK's location and then press OK to configure Android for Eclipse preferences. Now we can start with the development of an Android based application.