What is the life expectancy of
Android? Will it be around 15 years from now?
I haven't a clue. I hope I am around 15 years from now! ;)
How hard is it to upgrade a phone
to a newer version of Android?
If your carrier wants to upgrade the phone, then they will send you an upgrade package OTA and your phone will upgrade. If you want to upgrade manually, then you will have to root your phone and apply the upgrade manually. Just google for your phone type and the upgrade you want. Generally speaking, US carriers don't want to spend the time upgrading phones - they want you to buy a new one because they subsidize part of the cost to get you to buy a plan. In Europe, you pay the full price for the phone, so you can upgrade it as you wish. As a result, the versions change slowly - 86.7% of the phones out there are at version 2.3.3, and version 4 was just released. This percentage would be even higher if it weren't for tablets (versions 3 and 4 added a lot of tablet stuff).
Are there any compatibility
issues?
Yes and no. Some older early Android hardware will have problems with the newer android versions, but for the most part they are supposed to be backward compatible. The big moving target is screen resolution - ie tablets versus larger screen phones. It takes some ui redesign to move from a small screen to a giant one, and to be compatible with all of them. However, the underlying non-ui parts are the same.
How does one monetize Android
application development skills?
Write a killer app and sell it. ;) The google market is huge, so it is harder to get noticed (ie rated and found), and there is no easy way to talk to anyone at google about issues with your account. However, other markets exists - amazon looks promising, but I believe they take a larger cut, but provide better customer support. Of course, if your app is free, it does not matter.
Where can I find quality used
Android phones?
I am not sure what quality means, but in the usual places - craig's list, ebay, etc. Friends as well.....it does not take much time to download an app run it and then remove it. The Android SDK comes with a good emulator, so you can catch lots of issues with that tool. Again, the biggest issue I have found is varying screen resolutions and making sure everything looks right. The emulator helps, and I have not found a need to have every phone on the market in my possession to test. There are also testing services you can use - some free and some for pay.
What device would you recommend I
use to learn Android development – Phone, Tablet, Simulator....?
Start with the SDK and the emulator. Also, take a look at this page - http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html to see where to target your development. Then read the android developer docs - they are very very good. Depending on how you learn, you may want to pick up a book or two, but they are totally out of date except for the basics. Another good source is http://commonsware.com/mmurphy. You can pay for the e-book and get all the updates and changes for a year. Mark Murphy hangs out in the developer forum and provides very good answers to questions, especially for newbies.
Posted to PLUG, TFUG, AzPHP
I wondering about trends. Currently I make my living as a LAMP developer. The market seems strong and lots of main stream apps are built with PHP. So I expect the market to continue to be strong for 10 – 15 years. That is the time frame I am interested in.
Things are moving rather fast now. Cheap hardware is now a reality. It looks like a smart phone has more CPU and RAM than the laptop I bought 10 year ago, and the desktop I bought 7 year ago. I think I saw a smart phone that had a dual core 1.5ghtz processor and a gig of RAM. My first 2 computers didn't even have hard drives......
I'm intrigued by Android development. Seems there is really only one option and that is the Android SDK that is modified Java. I don't find Java to be intuitive, however I can live with it.
My main question has to do with compatibility. A friend tells me he thinks there are comparability issues between manufactures since they modify Android to met their needs and the lack of standards. After exchanging emails, it sounds like writing Android code is like writing JavaScript that needs to run in all the currently available browsers. We have JavaScript solutions – MooTools, jQuery … etc. However in the short time I've been looking at Android development, I have not found any information on compatibility issues (however I have not search either).
I have lots of questions.
What is the life expectancy of Android? Will it be around 15 years from now?
How hard is it to upgrade a phone to a newer version of Android?
Are there any compatibility issues?
How does one monetize Android application development skills?
Where can I find quality used Android phones?
What device would you recommend I use to learn Android development – Phone, Tablet, Simulator....?
Thank you so much for all your insight.
------------------------
Keith Smith
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