Thought Delimited

So yesterday, during the first half of the morning keynote at the Google I/O conference, Google made several announcements about the latest version of the Android OS:  version 2.2, codenamed "Froyo."  Here are several links to pages that go through the announcements:

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/android-22-and-developers-goodies.html

http://www.dzone.com/links/r/android_22_and_beyond.html

http://www.blog.droidweb.com/2010/05/android-2-2-annoucned-at-google-io-what-it-means-for-you/

A couple of additional notes:

• One of the announcements was that you could initiate actions on your phone via the "the cloud" (the Internet). In the demo, the presenter's assistant was able to get driving directions on his laptop using the Chrome browser and then send those directions to his Android phone by clicking on a certain link. The presenter said that browser initiated an "intent" on the Android device.

  In Android development, an Intent is a messaging object directed at a component (an Activity, a Service, or a Broadcast Receiver) within an Android application and delivers data to the component. Normally, an Intent can either be explicitly addressed to a specific component by name, or it can be implicitly targeted towards any component whose intent filters make them capable of receiving the intent. I'm curious to see how Google will implement this feature to make sure this capability isn't used maliciously.

• Another announcement was that Android 2.2 would allow developers and users to install applications on the SD card in the Android phone rather than in the phone's internal memory, something that many Android users have wanted for a long time.  The Android Developer site already has a documentation page up regarding this feature, which I glanced over.

  When they write an application using the API for Android 2.2 (apps written to an earlier API will NOT be movable to the SD card using the features in Android 2.2), developers can specify one of the following install locations within their application's manifest file:

  • "preferExternal": the app will initially be installed to the SD card automatically unless the SD card is full. The user will have the option to move it to internal storage if they like.

  • "auto": Android will determine the best location for the initial installation for the app, but again the user has the option of moving it.

  • "internalOnly": the app can only be installed in the internal memory of the device.

  The drawback to running an application from the SD card is that all application processes currently active on the SD card are killed whenever the user connects their Android device to their computer and chooses to mount the SD card as an external USB drive. Applications that use certain features can break when this situation occurs, and therefore such applications may have the "internalOnly" install setting in place to prevent problems.

  The documentation also points out that applications installed to the SD card will still store any private user data and databases for the application in the internal memory. So the need for a way to back up the application data was still needed even with the SD installation option, hence the announced feature in 2.2 that application data could be backed up to the cloud.