Google Android - Please butter my toast

Last week we started to look at Android, not the little robots, we mean the new Mobile Platform produced by Google.

So there are two questions your probably asking yourself at this point:
What is Android!!
It's an Open Source and alternative to Symbian, Windows Mobile and even the iPhone. It allows developers to create applications and release theme to world (if they want) a lot like the iPhone and App-store. If you want more information you can check out the Google page on What is Android.

What can I do with Android??
Whatever you want. Some ideas we had ranged from just upgrading the usability of handsets as we did, through to creating a welcome kiosk for front of businesses that displays a list of employees and allowed people to type in their name - the Android system could then Text or Email or Call the selected person to let them know that a visitor is in reception for them, it could even print the visitor label for the visitor. Contrary to the headline of this article you may not be able to get Android to butter your toast - yet... but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think of Android setting off your alarm and alerting your IP based Toaster to start the cooking process, it could even text your manager to say that you've overslept again and will be late in to work.

At this point there may be a third question:
How do I get Android???
There are a few mobile devices with Android already installed on them, however, these are not yet available in New Zealand. We had to get an Okta Touch from Telecom NZ (HTC Vogue for the rest of the world) and install Android (download from here) following these instructions. Luckily the Button configurations for the build were listed here.

So far we have downloaded it, installed it on a phone (the Okta Touch), installed the development tools / SDK (integrates with Eclipse), run the emulator and deployed some of the sample applications to it. This is however only the start for us - we have big plans for Android!!!

This is what we did to get Android going:

• Download android.zip from http://cs-alb-pc3.massey.ac.nz/vogue/ - link titled "Latest Version for HTC Vogue, Kaiser and Polaris"
• Unzipped android.zip to the desktop called testing
• Put a completely blank SD card in our Okta
• Connected the Phone to the pc via USB
• Unzipped Data.gz from the android folder
• We renamed the file 'data' in the new Data folder to be 'data.img' - dunno why it just works
  
• Copied the 2 files system.img and data.img (the data.img file could now be in a subdirectory called data) to the root of the SD card (NOTE the SD card should be clean - i.e. not even photos)
• Copied everything else from the unzipped android folder to the root folder of the Okta i.e. "My Device"/android
• Then you can just Start you Okta and go to Start > Program Files > File Explorer and run a file called "haret" that lives in "My Device"/android. When prompted to select a file just leave it as the file "default"
• This should then boot Linux and eventually boot into Android - Good work!!!! (It does take almost a full minute to get there though) .

These are the buttons that will be of interest for the build of Android above - thanks http://www.myhtcphone.com/vogue-cab-installer:

• Camera button - Keyboard
• Double tap camera button - Switch between portrait and landscape
• Volume Up - Back button.
• Volume Down - Menu
• End call - Power button
• Talk key - Launch dialer
• Power - Home key when on. Brings out of standby when screen is off

Hope this helps!!!

Cheers,
The Team