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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T03:06:44+00:00

I am writing an Android application that uses some functionality that has been published

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I am writing an Android application that uses some functionality that has been published under the Apache 2.0 license. The functionality is available in 2 ways:

  1. As java code
  2. As an intent in an Android application.

Being the typical developer that I am, I don’t want to make the user install a separate application so that they can use my own application – because it would definitely put me off using the application if I had to.

On the other hand, doing the work to get the application up and running using the Java code will take much longer.

My questions are thus:

  1. What are most developers doing now? Are they using intents from other apps?
  2. Does it matter to the average consumer that they need to download a separate application to make it work?
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  1. Editorial Team

    In my application EmailAlbum, I first depended on the presence of OpenIntents OIFileManager on the user phone to pick a file on SDCard or chose a destination folder for exporting a generated file.

    Later, I integrated my own version of the code of OIFileManager in my app’s source code for several reasons:

    • Depending on another app for basic (but essential) application features is like a suicide. If your app can’t really live without the other app and this app is not installed on most devices, your app won’t get used. Most people want apps that work on first start.
    • Another app was on the market which was providing it’s own (bad) implementation of the same intent and was making my app crash… users having it installed on their phone thought that was my app’s fault.
    • Providing a consistent UI was not possible.

    I think using public Intents is great to allow people to chose from various applications to extend your applications features or to reuse the content generated by your application. BUT your application has to be able to live on its own, depending only on standard apps provided with ALL android devices (ie. not even depending on Google proprietary apps if you want your app to be able to be used on devices which have not been approved by Google, those which come without the Android Market or GMail).

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