Samsung Captivate Phone and Android 2.2 ???

Gregory, you probably already heard the news: Samsung is finally updating the Captivate to Froyo.

Took them long enough!

Update! For anyone who hasn't tried Hero yet.

After finishing up my first Android app using their SDK, I downloaded Flex Hero & Flash Builder Burrito to check out the differences. Since I didn't have to parse the results of my .NET web service by hand (Android SDK limitation), I was able to get the data into the app quickly. My development time will be way less using Burrito. This alone sold me on Burrito. Android has no built-in way of using SOA, and has no simple way of parsing results from their recommended REST-ful services way of retrieving data. In Flex you can do all this with a couple lines of code. I was shocked that Google hasn't addressed this, as it is a major PITA and really slows down development.

[A tip for anyone heading down the SOAP road with Android SDK: check out WSClient++ from NeuroSpeech. Saved the day for me. http://wsclient.neurospeech.com/]

The only drawbacks so far:

1) Burrito was unable to connect to/import my .NET web services over HTTPS or HTTP, throwing these errors:

     using HTTPS:--"There was an error during service introspection.
WSDLException: faultCode=OTHER_ERROR: Unable to resolve imported document at 'https://www.removed/the/actual/url.asmx'.: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target"

     using HTTP:--"There was an error during service introspection.
WSDLException: faultCode=PARSER_ERROR: Problem parsing 'http:://www.removed/the/actual/url.asmx'.: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The element type "p" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</p>"."

2) File sizes: The Android SDK app version is 399 K. The Burrito version is 835 K, even though I did not duplicate all the views & functionality of the Android SDK version.

3) Cannot debug on my EVO: Burrito requires a Wi-Fi connection, which I am prevented from setting up at my workplace for security reasons. Hopefully, Adobe can set this up over USB.

4) Styling: Since I spent zero time trying to duplicate the look of my Android app's extensive styling. Burrito should be able to do it; it will likely just be a different way of doing things.

5) MobileIconItemRenderer seems less capable than Android's ListView for complex data display, but I didn't spend much time with the MobileIconItemRenderer's itemRenderer to say anything definite. I'm hoping MobileIconItemRenderer gets more default settings so we can easily implement two & three-line renderers, with different style settings for each line. Android SDK seems way ahead here with its default item renderer choices.

6) Android device emulator: Needs work--D-pad, other Android controls.

7) AIR file size: Lots of grumbling at the Android market about the 16 Megabyte download of AIR. This will be a major downside to deploying Burrito apps on the Market!

8) Should provide a built-in "busy" animation like Android's. A necessity, really.

Pluses:

+Even though it seems like a lot of Android devs end up using a singleton (application object) to store all data for sharing between views, I was very happy to see Burrito's createReturnObject() & viewActivate() methods. This should work perfectly for simple use cases and avoid having to create singletons for storing data.

++Burrito's design view is wa-aa-AY (three syllables) better then Eclipse's IDE using the ADT plug-in.

+++Typical Adobe attention to the details makes developing much simpler.

Bravo, Hero!

Hi Guys,

I'm successfully using flash based apps on a A Samsung Galaxy S with the latest 'leaked' froyo rom, there is plenty of info on how to update the various Galaxy S based devices to Froyo in the XDA forums, samsung are starting to role out official upgrades from mid OCtober so its not to far off for Canadian/US telco's.

Captivate forums

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=706

Galaxy S forums

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=656

David

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/02/samsung-captivate-gets-unofficial-froyo-build-with-flash-10-1/

Greg, I have the same questions you have...have you found any answers to this?

Dear Greg,

Interesting questions.  Some of it is beyond my expertise and it's all changing fast.

In summary, the latest version of Android (2.2) supports the Flash 10 player - and that's very good news.  But you have to be sure that the phone has the latest version of the Android operating system.

I don't know how strict AT&T is about app "purity".  In any case, there is probably a "jailbreak" that would permit you to run any app on the phone during development.

So, I think that the Flex forum is a fine place to post your issues.  And I would simply say this:

"I want to develop an app for the Samsung Captivate.  What are the issues with ...?  Do you have experience with ...?  Do you know solutions for ...?"

That's likely to stimulate interesting responses.

Keep me informed!

Oz

Galgal Systems - Semantic website enhancement tools.