Archive for May, 2009

 Android 1.5 SDK available now
      By Shaun Zelber,  May 7th, 2009 :: OS & Handsets

The Android Developers made the Android 1.5 SDK available for download, providing developers with a wide range of brand new features that will offer them the necessary tools to create new applications for compliant Android-powered devices.

The new development kit is geared, obviously, for the new version of Android, a refresh that owners of all Android phones will eventually be able to enjoy. It brings with it several important tools to make development easier, including a Virtual Devices feature to let developers emulate multiple Android devices and other improvements to better gauge performance issues – a big concern for mobile environments where battery life and CPU power are limited with a number of new features, including home-screen widgets, speech recognition, live folders, and soft keyboards, as well as new programming tools.

This is also the first version of the SDK that will support add-ons, letting developers easily import external libraries. While very little of this is important to the end user, it’s great news for the Android platform as a whole, as easier development will likely mean more programs to choose from.
Android 1.5 OS will probably be released for all Android smartphones in May, one month before Samsung launches the i7500, its very first Android handset.

SDK Contents Development tools

The SDK includes a full set of tools for developing and debugging application code and designing an application UI. You can read about the tools in the Dev Guide and access them in the /tools/ directory.

The tools package in this SDK includes updates from those provided in the previous SDK. The tools also require a different project structure. To use the new tools, you need to migrate your applications to the new development environment. For more information about how to migrate, see Upgrading the SDK.

Here is the download link