I know people other than me are having issues with this, so I'm starting a thread specifically to talk about all the things that are popping up just because phone manufacturers are running Android 1.5 on their CDMA phones.
I don't even want to know why. I don't care. All I know is running Android 1.5 on a CDMA phone means I can't build my application against the Android 1.5 SDK. At best, I have to try and build my application against some other version of the Android SDK, force the manifest to allow the application to be run on 1.5 CDMA phones, and hope it works ... Or, I can have a special build for Android 1.5 phones that have CDMA on them. Either solution makes my stomach churn. Also, I want to know where the conformance documentation on Android devices gets stored, and if they're public? This is the documentation that phone manufacturers sign off on to prove that their OS implementations match the API specification that Google publishes in the Android specification. Anyone? I ask, because as a developer I need to know where an OEM departs from the API, and I need to know what "Creative use" of the Android API the OEM has adopted. I see this CDMA on Android 1.5 problem so far on Samsung Moment and the at least one HTC device. Here is the support discussion I had with HTC itself. It starts out with my support request (rather ... a rant) to HTC: Customer Information Name Richard Schilling \Country United States Inquiry Information Inquiry Type Technical Support Inquiry Description You should have never released Android 1.5 on a CDMA device! http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=7194 I don't know, nor care, who made that decision. You're breaking my software and making it impossible to develop for your phones. -------------- 2010/03/17 06:35 Philip (North America Support (Tech)) Hello Richard, I understand that it is important for you to develop for the device. Android 1.5 works perfectly well for a large number of people on CDMA devices. I have read the issues you listed at the URL where you posted them, and I do understand your frustration with this issue. However, you have to keep in mind that the device was not designed solely to be developed for, and most users are able to use the device without problems. As well, HTC Technical Support cannot provide any support on the developmental side of things. I apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. Philip HTC Technical Support www.htc.com ----------------------- 2010/03/17 09:23 Richard Schilling Thanks for your response. It's not true to say that Android 1.5 works properly on a CDMA device. It doesn't provide CDMA tower identifier, and there's no documented work around. Bottom line: that's what I need. Have you read the API spec for Android 1.5? There's absolutely no CDMA support in the API spec for 1.5. You're running a non-conformant OS build when you run Android 1.5 on a CDMA device. From that standpoint, it's broken. I'm going to dig into the Google code for Android 1.5 and the HTC board support package to figure out what's going on here. I at least need this all documented. Any links to documentation you already have that you can point me to? There are several parameters about CDMA networks that Android 1.6 and higher provides to applications. At the very least, please, do the developer community a favor and document how we get those same CDMA parameters using Android 1.5. --------------------- New Response From [ Philip (North America Support (Tech)) ] Hello Richard, I just wanted to drop you a note to say that I did get your replies (all of them) so that you didn't have to worry about getting through. To clarify what I meant about the device working with 1.5, I meant that the device works, and runs properly, as released; this statement was not at all intended to imply that everything about the phone worked perfectly for all developers, as this is clearly not the case for you. At HTC Technical Support, our support is largely for the standard workings of the phone; applications included in the OS itself, things of that nature. We do not have much information on the side of things that you are inquiring about, as it is outside our general spectrum of support. As such, the documentation you have asked about, particularly, is not something that we have access to. These sorts of things are more in the hands of our developers, which poses a problem in this case as the email support you have contacted is technical support. To provide your feedback about what you need as an HTC device user, I would recommend filling out the survey at survey.htc.com/worldwide; this delivers your information to higher levels of HTC, and may be more likely to get the results that you need. I apologize for the lack of information that I have available on these subjects for you, as I am a big fan of the developer community personally. I was right in the middle of the requests for the kernels for both the Sprint Hero and the Eris in January, and it was frustrating that there was nothing I could do to speed along the process in that case either. Hopefully the documentation you need will be made available, and also that the point will be made moot soon with the update to 2.x. I apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with this. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
