SEVENCLICK
Mobile Technology Evangelists

It seems that Android is stepping out from the fog and becoming real, at last. Many time and many things in the mobile arena have taken place since November 2007, when Android and the Open Handset Alliance were announced and the so-called ‘Early look’ SDK was released.

Yesterday, Google released the first beta of Android SDK, that was named ‘Android SDK 0.9 beta’, what means a relevant step forward in the road to see the first Android device.

According to the Android Developers Blog’s post, the new SDK has experienced a lot of changes.

• Many changes on UI, specially a new Home screen
• New development tools, such as a graphical preview for XML layouts for users of Eclipse
• New applications: Alarm Clock, Calculator, Camera, Music player, Picture viewer and SMS/MMS Messaging.
• New/improved APIs.
• Tons of bugs fixed.

But there are bad news, too. GTalkService and Bluetooth APIs have been removed, due to schedule and security reasons, from Android 1.0. We hope Google includes these important APIs in next releases. Anyway, this announcement will upset many developers, for sure.

However, up to now, all we have were delays and rumours about the so expected first Android real world device. But, along with the new SDK, a ‘Developers Roadmap’ has been issued with the commitment to be a living document that “will be kept up to date as the Android landscape evolves”.

Thanks to this, we can view some important milestones coming up shortly. These are the main milestones in Android timeline:

• 12 November, 2007 - “Early Look” SDK released
• January to August, 2008 - Android Developer Challenge I
• 18 August, 2008 - Android 0.9 SDK beta released
• September 2008 - additional Android 1.0 (pre) SDK releases made available, as necessary
• Q3 - Q4 2008 - Android 1.0 SDK release 1 available (first actual 1.0-compatible SDK)
• Q4 2008 - Android 1.0 devices available at retail
• Q4 2008 - Source code released
• Q4 2008 - Key Announcement on Android Developer Challenge II

Looking at this, I hope Google will keep up this schedule and that this important step will definitely bring Android out from vaporware.

Link AndroidDevelopersBlog DevelopersRoadmap