I’m going to be writing my Android app soon, and thinking about buying a solid android device to develop on and play with. My question is for you guys, assuming you wanted to develop and test your app on an Adroid device, what would you recommend?
Samsung Galaxy looks promising, but I know choosing a good dev phone is one of those things you definitely need to choose wisely on. The Android device landscape seems to be broadening every day, so it’d be good to hear about the latest devices for developing. Perhaps I could just get a cheap clunker and it won’t make a difference?
I’m sort of a nerd, so if the device is pricey, but has some cool features that others don’t, then I’d still consider it. However, I don’t want to waste too much money on features that I may not need (or that may distract me ;)), like HD video, although it looks like a lot of phones have HD support anyways.
Tablets seem a bit much, but I’m still open to it… if you’re loving your Android tablet for developing, let me know about it. I could see some benefits like being sure my app will run on Android tablets and different resolutions.
Any caveats I should be worried about? I have a buddy who was developing Android when it first came out and I remember him complaining that he could never update his device, since the updates were always restricted for some reason. Is that still the case?
If you can speak to any of these points, I’d be happy to hear them.
Also concerned about using the location based stuff, like gps, will I need a contract?
I’ll be developing on my Macbook Air OSX, if you have any additional input as far as devices go, and using a Mac, that would be great too. Thanks!
Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Good because it is a phone that is supported directly from Google.
Samsung Galaxy S2, it just has all the features you need
One of those two for spec heavy phones, but you also need a cheaper not so good phone so you can get both ends of the device range, so get something like a IDEOS as well.
All you need to remember is that there is never going to be just one type of device being used, there are hundreds, if you have a phone thats close to the bottom and your app works almost as well as a phone as the top it will be good, because you will be able to catch the whole range of customers.
Also for location based things all you need to do is put permissions in the android manifest and it should be good, users are notified about these when they download the application
Mac can be good for development, its supported by Android as well so I dont think you will have a problem, when I went to the Android devs lab it seemed to be that all the Google guys had macs anyway