Graal on Android?
 

Will this ever happen or do you plan on sticking to the iPhone? With more and more phones using the android operating system and with them getting cheaper and cheaper I think it would be a good move. Would it be much work to port Graal iPhone to it?

I think Stefan said in the Classic Graal for iPhone thread that it wouldn't be too much work, and suggested that he'd already given it some thought.

So maybe it's only a matter of time?

Yeah, I remember Unixmad saying that they had successfully ported Graal to Android.

Could someone link the post about it because I can't seem to find it.

They both run on a Java Platform so I could understand it would be very easy for him, although I imagine there are challenges considering the wide array of differences between android phones. Different hardware, different input capabilities, different processing power, different firmware versions, etc.

But I would absolutely love to see this and it would be a very smart move, could double their mobile popularity and, over time, much more than that.

Android is poised to take over and I can't wait until it does. ;)

That's interesting. When I spoke to Stefan about developing applications for the iPhone, he never mentioned anything about Java.

The Graal client is actually not using Java, it is instead using the NDK when built for Android. I don't know how complete it is though or whether it will even be released yet. I suggest the hardware variations in Android devices might pose a problem though, since they are sometimes quite a lot bigger than between the iPhones.

Hm, well both iPhone and Android are meant to run apps on the Java platform. I know that Android at least made their own JVM interpreter that's leaps and bounds faster on a mobile platform.

I've heard of using C++ to make apps for iPhone, but last I checked you didn't have as many SDK resources available to you, and I haven't heard of -any- way to do it on Android (although I have seen a project to run Python, Perl, and other scripting languages on top of the Java runtime).

And, yeah, Android devices have more than just different flash memory and processing power. But at the very least every Android device has either a qwerty keyboard or a touchscreen (or both), and I know the SDK would let you check which are available. So on some Android devices the control could end up being like on PC. :)

The Android platform uses Dalvik. Essentially it is a custom compiler that takes Java code and translates it into Dalvik so that it can run on Android. The Android NDK makes it possible to develop apps in a native language like C++ though, which is what the Android Graal client uses. The iPhone, on the other hand, doesn't use Java at all; applications are written usually using Objective-C and Cocoa bindings, but you can use C++ and just bind to the bits of Cocoa that you need (like the virtual keyboard).
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.6_r1/index.html

Wikipedia has lied to me, then :(

I'm fairly certain the only language you can use in a practical manner for iPhone app development is objective-c, and a lot of people I've talked to prefer it to C++ by far, saying it's what C++ should've been.

I'm partial to C++ and Python, but that's getting off topic.

Anyways, anything definitive about Android? :D

That's an issue for the end user though. If they buy low end phones then they shouldn't expect to be able to run all the same content as the higher end phones.

As it stands the most popular Android phones are more powerful than the iPhone 3GS and the low end phones are about comparable to the normal iPhone 3G and 2G. So it shouldn't be a problem until some of the super-low-end, sub-$99 Android phones that are currently being developed are released.

It's pretty difficult to compare the hardware, it's not exactly apples to apples..

The way Android Apps are meant to be designed is to decide on a range of hardware that you'll support (so from the lower end iPhone 2G/3G comparable phones to the Google Nexus :D) and design your app so that it will at least run on the lowest end of those.

Years ago I knew of people who could hardly run Graal on their crappy old machines. It's just a fact of life that your app will not hit all audiences due to hardware constraints, but with Android it is fairly easy to hit a large amount of them. Especially if the current low end Android phones are comparable to the iPhone 2G/3G or even the iPod Touch, all of which run Graal iPhone.

i c wut u did thar

If Graal came out on Android, I'd be seriously interested in helping with some development efforts. My interest in Graal has waned significantly in the past while. Just sayin'.

I'd defiantly get friends involved in it, as of right now when I'm at home I use my android phone for everything. When I say everything I mean it. I tether it for internet to play graal and watch hulu, and then the phone itself gmail, phone calls, and just about everything else except for making toast... although I'm sure there's an app for that. I'm honestly on my phone more than I am anything else and if graal was available on the Android I would only ever use the computer to Dev. 90% of the time I'm on my phone when I'm around friends. Having Graal would just be an added bonus and would compel me to make a server specifically for the mobile client. Another thing I would like to see is RC for android for playerworld owners who want to keep active while on the go or at work to kill time.

That would be one of the best things they could develope. I work from the middle of the week through the weekend at night so it would allow me to keep up with my staff while I'm at work because the majority of players/staff come on at night.

If they can succesfully port Graal iPhone to Android they should consider to port Graal to Symbian (S60V5) too, that would be awesome.