2009 has been a great year for Android Market. With the support of developers like you, Android Market now has more than 20,000 applications. Of these applications, games have proven to be particularly popular with Android users. Seven of the ten most popular paid applications on Android Market are games, so there’s a significant opportunity for game developers as the number of Android devices continues to grow at a rapid pace.

To better support this trend, we are increasing our support of Android game development. As a first step, we will be presenting a number of Android sessions at the Game Developers Conference on March 9th and 10th in San Francisco. The sessions will be technical and will include everything you need to know about Android game development in Java or C++. Engineers from the Android team will also be available to answer your questions. Whether you are new to the platform or already have games in development, we would love to meet you face-to-face, answer your questions, and see what you’re working on. Be sure to keep checking the GDC site because we’ll be adding more sessions.

But that’s not all. Google and GDC will also be providing complimentary Android phones to attendees who register for All Access or Tutorials and Summits passes by the Early Bird deadline of February 4, 2010. Qualified attendees will receive either a Nexus One or a Verizon Droid by Motorola, so they can quickly apply what they learn from the various Android sessions. You can find more details about the Android phone offer on the GDC site.

Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to develop awesome games for Android, and this is a first step. Hope to see you at GDC!

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Late last year, we held a series of developer labs to give you a chance to ask questions and play with some new hardware. One of the most common questions we received was, “When are you going to visit my city?” It’s a good question, and we’re pleased to answer it today.

The Android team is embarking on a world tour, which will include cities in Europe, North America, and Asia.

At each stop, we’ll be delivering an update on the state of the Android platform—including a look at the latest Android hardware. It’s a great opportunity to meet like-minded Android app developers, play with the latest Android devices, test your apps, and ask Android team members any questions you might have. You can find out more on the Android Developer Lab site.

Here’s the line-up of Android Developer Lab locations for February and March 2010:

North America

• Austin, Texas – Feb 4
• Seattle, Washington – Feb 8
• Waterloo, Ontario, Canada – Feb 8
• Washington, D.C. – Feb 9
• Mountain View, California – Feb 10
• Cambridge, Massachusetts – Feb 11
• New York, New York – Feb 12

Europe

• London, UK – Feb 2
• Paris, France – Feb 8
• Berlin, Germany – Feb 10
• Zurich, Switzerland – Feb 12
• Madrid, Spain – Feb 13

Asia

• Singapore – Feb 28
• Taipei, Taiwan – March 3
• Hong Kong – March 5

If you’d like to attend, you’ll need to request a spot by February 1st. Space is limited, so please wait for an email to confirm that you have a spot in the lab.

While we’re on the road, we’re also going to stop by and speak at the following local Android user groups:

• Stockholm, Sweden – Feb 4
• London, UK – Feb 5
• Chicago, Illinois, USA – Feb 6

We’re looking forward to meeting you in person!

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I’m happy to announce that we’ll be hosting a very special Android Developer Lab at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on Wednesday, February 17th as part of the inaugural App Planet event.

There will be technical presentations throughout the day and a developer lounge where you can talk to Android team members and meet others in the growing Android developer community.

Whether you’re already developing Android apps, you’re an experienced mobile developer, or you’re considering making your ?rst foray into writing mobile applications, the Android Developer Lab will provide access to the resources you need to create innovative and compelling apps for the Android platform.

Space is limited in the technical sessions, so if you’re attending MWC and want to come by the Android Developer Lab, make sure to sign up now.

Also, we’re offering a limited number of complimentary passes that provide access to the Android Developer Lab, the rest of App Planet, and the general exhibition areas for MWC. Sign up to be considered to receive a pass.

Hope to see you in Barcelona!

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With the introduction of live wallpapers in Android 2.1, users can now enjoy richer, animated, interactive backgrounds on their home screen. A live wallpaper is very similar to a normal Android application and has access to all the facilities of the platform: SGL (2D drawing), OpenGL (3D drawing), GPS, accelerometers, network access, etc. The live wallpapers included on Nexus One demonstrate the use of some of these APIs to create fun and interesting user experiences. For instance, the Grass wallpaper uses the phone’s location to compute sunrise and sunset times in order to display the appropriate sky.

Creating your own live wallpaper is easy, especially if you have had previous experience with SurfaceView or Canvas. To learn how to create a live wallpaper, you should check out the CubeLiveWallpaper sample provided with the Android 2.1 SDK; you will find it in the directory platforms/android-2.1/samples/CubeLiveWallpaper.

A live wallpaper is very similar to a regular Android service. The only difference is the addition of a new method, onCreateEngine() whose goal is to create a WallpaperService.Engine. The engine is responsible for handling the lifecycle and the drawing of a wallpaper. The system provides you with a surface on which you can draw, just like you would with a SurfaceView. Drawing a wallpaper can be very expensive so you should optimize your code as much as possible to avoid using too much CPU, not only for battery life but also to avoid slowing down the rest of the system. That is also why the most important part of the lifecycle of a wallpaper is when it becomes invisible. When invisible, for instance because the user launched an application that covers the home screen, a wallpaper must stop all activity.

The engine can also implement several methods to interact with the user or the home application. For instance, if you want your wallpaper to scroll along when the user swipes from one home screen to another, you can use onOffsetsChanged(). To react to touch events, simply implement onTouchEvent(MotionEvent). Finally, applications can send arbitrary commands to the live wallpaper. Currently, only the standard home application sends commands to the onCommand() method of the live wallpaper:

• android.wallpaper.tap: When the user taps an empty space on the workspace. This command is interpreted by the Nexus and Water live wallpapers to make the wallpaper react to user interaction. For instance, if you tap an empty space on the Water live wallpaper, new ripples appear under your finger.
• android.home.drop: When the user drops an icon or a widget on the workspace. This command is also interpreted by the Nexus and Water live wallpapers.

Please note that live wallpaper is an Android 2.1 feature. To ensure that only users with devices that support this feature can download your live wallpaper, remember to add the following to your manifest before releasing to Android Market:

• <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="7" />, which lets Android Market and the platform know that your application is using the Android 2.1 version.
• <uses-feature android:name="android.software.live_wallpaper" />, which lets the Android Market and the platform know that your application is a live wallpaper.

Many great live wallpapers are already available on Android Market and we can’t wait to see more!

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Today, we are releasing the SDK component for Android 2.1, so that developers can take advantage of the new features introduced in Android 2.1. Please read the Android 2.1 release notes for more details. You can download the Android 2.1 component through the SDK Manager.

In addition to the new SDK, a new USB driver that supports Nexus One is also available today through the SDK Manager. The USB driver page contains more information.

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