Licensing Server News

It’s been reported that someone has figured out, and published, a way to hack some Android apps to bypass our new Android Market licensing server. We’ll be saying more on this, but there are a few points that deserve to be made right now:The licensing service, while very young, is a significant step forward in terms of protection over the plain copy-protection facility that used to be the norm. In the how-to-pirate piece, its author wrote: “For...

A Little Too Popular

A couple of weeks ago, we arranged that registered developers could buy an unlocked Nexus One via their publisher page in Android Market. We think it’s a good development platform and a nice phone. Apparently, you agree. Somewhat too many of you, in fact; we blew through the (substantial) initial inventory in almost no time, and they’re back-ordered from HTC, who are doing a pretty good job of managing runaway success amid a worldwide AMOLED shortage....

Two Simple Questions

And the answers to them, posted here and there by senior Android engineers.How much memory is my app using?Over at Stack Overflow, our own Dianne Hackborn takes this up in detail. There's no simple answer, but Dianne does offer lots of useful information.How do I make a ScrollView behave?This one does have a simple answer, and our Romain Guy offers it in ScrollView’s handy trick. It's easy enough to do once you know how, which is harder to find...

Powering Chrome to Phone with Android Cloud to Device Messaging

[This post is by Dave Burke, who's an Engineering Manager 80% of the time. — Tim Bray]Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) was launched recently as part of Android 2.2. C2DM enables third-party developers to push lightweight data messages to the phone. C2DM created a nice opportunity for us to pull together different Google developer tools to create a simple but useful application to enable users...

Nexus One Developer Phone

We've always offered unlocked phones for direct sale to registered Android Developers. As of today, the Developer Phone is the Nexus One, at a price of $529. To see the details or order a phone, you need to sign in to your Android developer account and click on the "Development Phones" link.The Nexus One combines an up-to-the-minute platform (Android 2.2), modern hardware, and the pure Android software suite. It's a good choice both for people who...

Best Practices for Handling Android User Data

[This post is by Nick Kralevich, an engineer on the Android Security Team. — Tim Bray]As the use of mobile applications grows, people are paying more attention to how these applications use their data. While the Android platform contains extensive permissions designed to protect users, application developers are ultimately responsible for how they handle users’ information. It’s important for developers...