Bluemoon Sanctuary

I dont see anyone bringing up this topic.

Before the Motorola Droid was released this was posted at Androidandme.com http://androidandme.com/2009/10/news/google-fails-to-address-app-storage-issue-with-droid-and-android-2-0/

The Motorola Droid will be the most powerful Android phone to date when it launches on November 6, 2009. However, the device still features the same shortcomings of all other Android phones. The Droid ships with a 512 MB ROM which contains only 256 MB available for app storage.

Google does not support installing apps to the SD card (and likely never will), so developers are limited in what they can create.

For most applications, we want a small file size to limit the download times. When it comes to 3D games though, we need a ton of space for all the high-res textures, audio, and video.

Have you seen all the awesome iPhone and iPod Touch games? Hardly any of them would fit on an Android phone. It is not uncommon for popular titles to easily exceed 100 MB. For example, the game Myst takes up a whopping 727MB.

Motorola is going to promote the Droid as a mobile gaming device since it features the OMAP3430 platform which features a dedicated PowerVR SGX 530 GPU. This is the similar type of GPU as what was included with the iPhone 3G S, so we know it can pump out some crazy graphics.

I hope Google and Motorola find a way to resolve this problem, but the real solution is to include larger flash ROMs inside the phones.

Are other handset makers paying attention to this issue?

You can go see the 100+ comments that people are discussing there, most of them say that either Google/Motorola are short-sighted/stupid.

I am a developer myself (ok I am not a good one, but I make decent stuff), I was trying to make a World of Darkness game for Android. But there is a problem because my game will have alot of music and pictures, which I am estimating going to be 40-50mb. I know there is a method where I can try downloading only the executable to the ROM and rest download to SD-card on first launch, but that is another story.

Because of you ignorance and refusing to listen or even answer your customers you are officially on my shit list.

Seriously, how hard is it to actually have a few people dedicated to answering people's question on your support forums. Your Android OS is becoming like most other Major linux distros where we need to depend on the community for the support compare to the company which is backing it up. Not there is anything wrong with that, for me since I am quite tech-savvy I dont really mind, but you will not be attracting the mass market.

You are discriminating developers from countries other than USA or UK thinking only they are the best ones for Application Development. You refuse to answer the questions thrown at you in the support forum, only choosing to answer questions which are easy. You even didnt do enough marketing research, assuming that everyone will be flocking over to the Open Handset Alliance. You assume everywhere in the world is the same as the USA way of doing this, or at least assume that the USA-way is the right way.

You refuse to partner with anyone other than Handphone OEMs, you only want your Android Platform on phones, yet you say you practice an Open platform approach. Why Linux started getting famous was the ability to deploy it on ANY DEVICE, and yes Android can do the same thing, but you refuse to give your Google Apps to anyone who deploys Android on something other than phones (tablets for example or even netbooks). Forgot phones, some countries you refuse to give the Android marketplace, currently many parts of Asia dont even have access to the Android Marketplace at all, just cause of their geographic location.

As much as I hate Apple and Microsoft, you too are on your way to a small downfall. You are facing the same problem microsoft faced years ago, which is expanding too many different areas that it is getting out of your control.

I really thank you sooooo much, as much as I love the Android Platform, I will not be buying another Android device till you guys actually learn your lesson or admit to the mistakes.

For the past few months I been trying to push (of course not much success) the issue of the Android Marketplace exclusion from Malaysia. Yea there is so many topics in this very forum about how the phone is broken or not complete without the marketplace. I taught I will highlight what is going on, just so most people will get the idea what is actually happening.

Disclaimer, I am not bashing Google, and other companies just for fun. In fact I hope they can improve for the benefits of all the users.

Snippets From Android Help Forum

Thread Title: Android Market in Malaysia
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Andr...5a83d524b&hl=en

Basically, someone ask when it is available on 6/23/09 and Google's response was they dont support Malaysia.

Thread Title: When will Android Market be available in Malaysia and why is google limiting access to the market so severly?
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Andr...509b9a2c6&hl=en

Here we see, people complaining Google and HTC is pushing the blame to each other, and some even said it is our local government's fault.

Just search around the forum for with the keywords "Malaysia" and you can see tons of speculations about this problems.


Now I will provide the Official Reasoning (or what looks like legit so far) on why this is happening.
First thing is you must understand the Malaysian Handphone market is way different that those from UK and USA, in those two countries when people look to buy a phone they will go their operators (Vodafone, AT&T, Verizon, Rogers, T-Mobile, Orange, etc) to get a discounted phone with a contract (most likely 12-24months). Yes, recently this thread has been getting popular in Malaysia too, thanks to the introduction of Blackberry and Iphone handsets, but majority of the Malaysian public buys Handphones from Handphone shops, and not telcos (Maxis, Digi, Celcom, U-mobile). Basically point is we are opposite of UK and USA. (another reasoning is because we use 100% GSM, hence why we do this, since CDMA technology will ensure you most likely get a phone from your telco)

If you actually talk to Google Employee's they will tell you to get Android Marketplace in Malaysia. both the Phone Maker (In Malaysia's case most-likely HTC or Samsung) and the Telco providing the phone must be part of the OpenHandSet Alliance. ( List of members can be seen here. http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/oha_members.html ).

Some response I got from Google is saying that the telco I am using is choosing not to include the Android Marketplace with my phone. :stars: Which is confusing since I didnt buy a phone from my Telco (in my case Maxis-My). So basically, if our telcos in Malaysia dont want join OHA, we are screwed not to get Android Marketplace at all. As you can check list of countries where Android Marketplace (Full Free + Paid) is available has both the Phone Maker + Telcos representing them. So now unless anyone here got any idea how to push Maxis, Digi, etc etc to joining the OSA and help to push for Android marketplace we wont be seeing it for a very long long long time. According to Google, they give 30% profits from Paid Apps to the Telco's anyways so I dont see a disadvantage for our local telcos, I mean they are getting more money.

But then we come to another problem, Google expects that the Telco's version of the Android Marketplace must be in a Firmware customized by the Telco itself. Which I doubt any local telco wants to do it. :w So now even I am lost what to do.

Another reason Google Claims is because of Copy-protection, the currect marketplace (paid one) copy-protection can be by-passed by root users using a bug. Basically if your friend buy's a paid app you can take it from him and use it. Which is ironically funny, since almost everyone I know with an Android Phone in Malaysia is currently with custom firmware (rooted) and some even have those paid apps installed free of charge. This supposed to stop the piracy, but it looks like encouraging it.

I just hope this brief explanation helps to highlight what is going on. If you feel I am wrong, please by all means do correct me. I am only repeating what I get from Emails from HTC and Google and also the Android help forums. I myself now being a long time Android Fan/ evangelist am trying desperately to love the operating system but it is getting harder day by day due to Google's way of doing business.



P.S. : Even-Though Android is partially Open-Source (it is not full due to the Apache License for most part), stuff like the Android marketplace is closed-source and belongs to Google. So basically when we install those custom firmwares we are actually doing something illegal. :hyper: (Remember 1 year ago few custom roms was forced to be taken down due to containing GoogleApps)



EDIT: By the way, Malaysia not only one with this problem. Even my friends from Sweden and Finland all having the EXACT same problem as us with the telcos. Specially Finland since they support Nokia there, and dont buy from telcos (unless Iphone of course).

Also, here is something funny, check out this Swedish developer that I know. If you see his topic he opened you will be wondering if Google really cares. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Andr...fcd4b4140&hl=en

Lets first see what exactly is JavaFX. To put it simple, JavaFX is a software platform for creating and delivering rich Internet applications that can run across a wide variety of connected devices. The current release (JavaFX 1.2, June 2009) enables building applications for desktop, browser and mobile phones. TV set-top boxes, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players and other platforms are planned.


It can be said that JavaFX is target to programmers who already know Java programming and want to make rich-interactive applications. But here is where the problem is, I see that JavaFX on desktop supports Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac OS operating systems but no Linuz (there is for Linux, but it is a Beta version only). For something which is targeted to programmers, I am wondering why they didnt focus on the Linux platform, there is nothing wrong support windows or even mac os, but most java programmers I know always use Linux + Eclipse/Netbeans to program, so this kinda sucks.

JavaFX is said to run on both the desktop and mobile, I have already mention it's weakness on the desktop, but for the mobile it has another weakness, there are hardly any phone manufactures support this technology. Nokia, one of the largest phone manufacturer has declined to answer whether or not they will support this technology, but from the looks of it (just do a simple google search "Nokia JavaFX"), things doesnt look good. There is however good news, Windows Mobile SUPPORTS JavaFX, but when you put a great technology on an OS which people are rejecting, it is kinda already doomed for failure.

There might be logical reasons why companies/OEMs are not putting JavaFX on their phones, one being that they way sun microsystems (the guys who own Java) make money is opposite of Adobe. Adobe for example gives away the technology to run Flash (flash player) for FREE but one will need to pay for the IDE, where as Sun Microsystems gives the IDE away for free but OEMs will have to pay the license for the runtime to run Java stuff.

There is still a nit of hope, since there was one time that JavaFX was showed to be able to run on Android-powered devices and with more and more companies picking up android as their OS, JavaFX might just pick up. But for now, in the mobile world, JavaFX is pratically DEAD, but still pretty decent on the desktop.