Android vs iPhone development

I stumbled upon this article talking about the pros and cons of developing for the Android and iPhone platforms. It's an interesting read, especially if you've had some experience developing mobile apps. I agree with most of the points made in the article.

In the 2 months I've been working on j3wao, I've already encounter a bunch of the Android issues the article talks about. Probably the biggest complication we've hit so far is the huge disparity of device screen resolutions. Targeting all Android phones is a nightmare for this reason alone. Another major issue is the emulator. It takes something like 2-3 minutes to start up and load the home screen. Every operation on the phone is incredibly laggy, even basic things like doing the unlock slide. We might have a lot of issues testing our game on the emulator because of this issue.

Unfortunately, we are (realistically) stuck with Android-based development and testing for j3wao. While we plan to deploy to iOS devices, Android will probably be the primary target for development and testing. There's more financial commitment to developing for iPhone. At the very least, we need a $99 licence fee.  There's also the fact that we need Macs to develop and test on. This is a major inconvenience when we have 4 developers for this project. You get what you pay for, I guess.

Smartphone Medical Devices

Check this out. A company called MobiUS released a very cool, and very portable, ultrasound system. The system is primarily comprised of the wand and a smartphone. Because both of these components are so small and portable, the entire system is very mobile and inexpensive to use. Further, because the device stores the data  in a phone, it makes sharing the data very easy.

I think it's really interesting to see all the new applications coming out of smartphones. I'd like to see what other innovations we might see from smartphones.

J3WAO Game

So I realize that I haven't talked about the actual game we want to create for J3WAO.

Our game is a music driven RPG. The player's attack are linked to music and interactive cues on the screen. The player needs to tap (or swipe!) the screen at the right time and place, based on the music. The attack mechanics are very much osu! inspired. We are also working on a storyline and a Final Fantasy Tactics style map.

We are planning to release to both iPhone and Android. We also have plans to release a desktop (web-based) version. We are using Adobe AIR to give us the flexibility to deploy to all these platforms with minimal effort. We get to use Adobe Flash and Actionscript 3 for development. These tools have great support for game design, so using this platform will probably save us a lot of development time.

Our first milestone release (of the three scheduled for the course) is next Thursday. Our goal is to have a simple proof of concept demo out by then. I'll try to post some screenshots of the game when it gets more presentable. :P

Mobile Development

Looks like I'm getting my foot in the mobile development door with ARTS/DAC 304. For our first assignment, we are making an iPhone game that is aimed to educate people on Canada's Food Guide. We have a lot of control on what goes into the game. Jesse and I are partnering for this, so it should be fun. :) This probably means we'll overkill the software architecture. :P We only have a week to get this project ready to demo (for the next lecture). Should be a fun course. Time to go learn ObjectiveC .

Smartphones And Your Health

I've recently seen a few new smartphone apps dedicated to your health. In the past, I've seen things like Runkeeper that help you keep track of your fitness. More recently, I've seen things like this: an iPhone add-on that can measure and monitory your blood pressure. The iHealth dock is even capable of taking that information and sending it directly to your doctor. They have plans to expand to support various other monitors (like glucose monitors).

I think that making these sorts of checks less scary is a great idea. Being able to do this sort of stuff at home, using a device that you are already comfortable with, will certainly lower the anxiety associated with going to a hospital. It can simplify doing these checks, and increase accuracy by preventing things like the white-coat effect.

I'm not sure about this whole "sending data to your doctor" thing, though. I don't think healthcare providers have time to log every single blood pressure reading you take, nor do they really care. Your day-to-day blood pressure fluctuation is not that important. They really care about things like averages. This is something you can do on your own, and then just submit an average to the physician. As I'm learning at Karos Health, healthcare providers already have enough problems organizing all the available data in a secure and accessible way. Having random iPhone data thrown at them is only going to complicate the situation. While self-reporting is generally a good idea, it needs to be implemented very carefully to be effective.

In any case, I would like to see what other ways smartphones can make healthcare more accessible.

Why Android Sucks

Check out this article talking about a well-known messaging issue with Android phones. Essentially, this bug can result in sending your text to the wrong contact. I've personally experienced this problem. Thankfully, I only texted Keyar instead of another friend about something generally unimportant("When are you coming over?"). I was quite confused when Keyar said, "Why did you ask me when I was coming over?" from the same room as me.

Really, Android?! You can't even get basic messaging working correctly? Really? How the hell did this slip through their QA? Not impressed. You can't release a program with a serious issue like this. To make things even worse, this bug has been a known issue in since July, and until yesterday(!) it was marked as a 'medium' priority fix! What the hell? Thankfully, it's now reassigned as a 'critical' priority bug. That only took 6 months. This certainly doesn't look very good on open source development.

I have no idea how Android is doing so well in sales with issues like this. A phone that can't reliably communicate is useless. I can only imagine how many problems this bug has caused for Android users everywhere.

Dear Google, be better.