5 ms·

I have been debating fiddling wither win7 or android. What is a good android phone to test/develop with? Is the nexus still the best choice?

stanleydrew 16y ago
The Nexus One is absolutely still the best phone to develop and test with. I also happen to think it's the best phone for daily use.
mahmud 16y ago
You can start hacking Android without a phone. The emulator is just cool :-)
- jawngee 16y ago
  The emulator is a dog. Compared to the iPhone anyways. It's useless for web development.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    How many platforms does the iPhone emulator run on? Is it instrumentable and controllable by user applications using nothing but sockets and octets? Didn't think so :-) Android emulator is slow to start, but it's cross-platform, and allows for hot-updating.
    - billjings 16y ago
      I have just about completely ditched the android emulator because it is irritatingly slow and I'm constantly finding it with its pants down trying to talk to eclipse. At our company we've also found that it doesn't give an accurate idea of how readable the text is in your interface, or how easy it is to interact with, partly because it's just too big on the screen and partly because it's sluggish. It is at its most useful when I want to pull a file from internal storage, which often isn't possible on a device, or when I don't have a device handy, in which case it is a passable solution. It's never, ever my first choice, though.
      - biafra 16y ago
        I use the emulator for continuous integration. Its really helpful for unit- and integration-testing. Combine it with Robotium and you can thoroughly test you application across screen sizes and Android OS Versions.
        stakent 16y ago
        Thank you for pointing out Robotium. Can you elaborate more about your test setup? TIA
        biafra 16y ago
        I use the maven-android-plugin to build the dependencies in seperate modules. I have a patched version of bouncycastles crypto implementation (to have openpgp in android). Then there is the network code which also contains no android dependencies so it can be tested without the emulator. Another module is the App itself. The last module is the TestApp. This is the recommended Test Setup: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/testing/testing_otheride.html http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/testing/testin... The testapp and the app are copied to the emulator or a real device. Then the instrumentation is started. The maven build fails if any error or failure occurs while building, installing or testing. The continuous integration is done by hudson. The emulator can be started "headless" (-no-window) so it doesn't need to connect to the running XWindow-Server. Currently I am starting the emulator from maven with a special profile that is only used in hudson. When testing locally I usually have my phone already connected. It seems to be possible to have hudson start the emulator. With that setup logcat-output would be captured by hudson. Thats were I want to go. Also missing in my setup is an multi environment build with all screen resolutions, locales and OS-Versions.
        stakent 16y ago
        Thank you again. Btw. I've upvoted your response, but still see one point next to it. Strange.
        billjings 16y ago
brettnak 16y ago
Unfortunately, if you want a warranted phone, I think the nexus might be your best choice. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that they will still replace it under warrantee if something happens to it and you have root. With all other phones, as far as I'm aware, if you root your phone, you loose warrantee. I rooted my Motorola Droid and a about 6 months later parts of the screen stopped working. They wouldn't replace it because it had been rooted. I probably should have just undone all that and taken it back to another store, but I ended up just buying a new phone.
biafra 16y ago
As a development phone the Nexus One is the best choice. You can unlock the bootloader and install Android from source after that.

stanleydrew 16y ago

The Nexus One is absolutely still the best phone to develop and test with. I also happen to think it's the best phone for daily use.

mahmud 16y ago

You can start hacking Android without a phone. The emulator is just cool :-)

jawngee 16y ago
The emulator is a dog. Compared to the iPhone anyways. It's useless for web development.
- mahmud 16y ago
  How many platforms does the iPhone emulator run on? Is it instrumentable and controllable by user applications using nothing but sockets and octets? Didn't think so :-) Android emulator is slow to start, but it's cross-platform, and allows for hot-updating.
  - billjings 16y ago
    I have just about completely ditched the android emulator because it is irritatingly slow and I'm constantly finding it with its pants down trying to talk to eclipse. At our company we've also found that it doesn't give an accurate idea of how readable the text is in your interface, or how easy it is to interact with, partly because it's just too big on the screen and partly because it's sluggish. It is at its most useful when I want to pull a file from internal storage, which often isn't possible on a device, or when I don't have a device handy, in which case it is a passable solution. It's never, ever my first choice, though.
    - biafra 16y ago
      I use the emulator for continuous integration. Its really helpful for unit- and integration-testing. Combine it with Robotium and you can thoroughly test you application across screen sizes and Android OS Versions.
      - stakent 16y ago
        Thank you for pointing out Robotium. Can you elaborate more about your test setup? TIA
        biafra 16y ago
        I use the maven-android-plugin to build the dependencies in seperate modules. I have a patched version of bouncycastles crypto implementation (to have openpgp in android). Then there is the network code which also contains no android dependencies so it can be tested without the emulator. Another module is the App itself. The last module is the TestApp. This is the recommended Test Setup: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/testing/testing_otheride.html http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/testing/testin... The testapp and the app are copied to the emulator or a real device. Then the instrumentation is started. The maven build fails if any error or failure occurs while building, installing or testing. The continuous integration is done by hudson. The emulator can be started "headless" (-no-window) so it doesn't need to connect to the running XWindow-Server. Currently I am starting the emulator from maven with a special profile that is only used in hudson. When testing locally I usually have my phone already connected. It seems to be possible to have hudson start the emulator. With that setup logcat-output would be captured by hudson. Thats were I want to go. Also missing in my setup is an multi environment build with all screen resolutions, locales and OS-Versions.
        stakent 16y ago
        Thank you again. Btw. I've upvoted your response, but still see one point next to it. Strange.
      - billjings 16y ago

brettnak 16y ago

Unfortunately, if you want a warranted phone, I think the nexus might be your best choice. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that they will still replace it under warrantee if something happens to it and you have root. With all other phones, as far as I'm aware, if you root your phone, you loose warrantee. I rooted my Motorola Droid and a about 6 months later parts of the screen stopped working. They wouldn't replace it because it had been rooted. I probably should have just undone all that and taken it back to another store, but I ended up just buying a new phone.

biafra 16y ago

As a development phone the Nexus One is the best choice. You can unlock the bootloader and install Android from source after that.