Since I own my Samsung Galaxy Android phone I use it a lot. I like the software and since I’m a software author as well, I have decided to try to develop my own application for Android. Actually, I just wanted too see how difficult it is to develop an Android application. I use to develop interesting utilities myself, but I knew that android uses java for development. And I don’t know java yet and haven’t used it yet. Nevertheless, I tried anyway.

The process was not easy, just to set up the working environment took quite some time. I had to install Android SDK, update it with the right version packages, create AVDs (Android virtual disk), install ant, learn how to use Android emulator, learn how to build an application, learn how to deploy an application, and last but not least, run the applciation in the emulator (fortunately I already knew how to make this last step because I was using the same OS on my phone). I succeeded running my first Android application – it was the Hello Android example from Android developers web site – so maybe I shouldn’t be calling the application mine 🙂

I have also managed to change the text strings and redeploy the application. Also, I have used a visual tool for building user interface for Android. It’s called DroidDraw, but all I could do was create a button, copy and paste it’s code to my working Hello example and run it. The automatic way didn’t work or I just didn’t figure it out. I still have to figure out how to add an action to a button, but I’m affraid this will require at least some basic java knowledge that I don’t yet have. I hope Pascal, Delphi, C, PHP, HTML, CSS, and javascript knowledge will help me.

Next I’ll order or download a book on Android development and try to find some time to dig into it and make something useful. Probably I’ll also install Eclipse for easier development.