Devices and SDKs

My first real smart device was a Palm V. For its time, it was an amazing device and even today, the hardware looks gorgeous. I never managed to find an SDK for it, though.

After that I got a Sony Ericsson P800, and later upgraded to the P910. There is a Symbian/UIQ SDK, but I never got it to work. A humongous download, an ancient gcc toolset, separate emulator images, everything command-line and nothing documented.

Compared to that, the HTC TyTN II running Windows Mobile 5 (and later 6) I got after that was a delight to develop for. Full-featured, well-documented SDK, first-class emulator, everything integrated with Visual Studio, and you could use any .NET language or straight C to make apps. You can say about Microsoft what you want, but their developer support is still the best there is. I stuck with the .NET Compact Framework and made a game and a couple of quite useful apps.

And then Android appeared. Java-based SDK, which isn't my favorite, but entirely free-of-charge and integrated with a proper IDE, and excellent emulator support. Extensive API for various Google services. Windows Mobile wasn't really going anywhere, so when my contract was up, I got my current device, the HTC Hero. And I've been having tons of fun with it ever since.

You can tinker around with your own Android device as little or as much as you want, but on top of that, Google makes it really, really easy for you to take what you made and offer it to others in the form of the Android Market.

And, at the urging of friends, that's what I did. Currently, I have three apps available, a note-taking app, a file manager, and a running tasks app, which you can find on the market if you search for "banderlabs" and on the web on my Google Code page.

And at 113.395 downloads and 73.980 active installs, I'm rather happy. It's great seeing something I developed getting used and making people's life better. And I plan to keep refining my current apps and adding new ones, a few of which I'm already close to finishing.

Let's see how long I can keep it up. =)