Neither your assessment nor your idea are entirely new, but need we point out more relevant than ever. I've checked out Moto's dev program a while back. As you might be aware, they offer a layer of repackaged tools, and resell DeviceAnyhwhere. Not exactly a compelling or meaningful formula. Because it does not put the dev in front of actual physical devices. I am not aware other manufacturers offering anything meaningful either. So, 1. Manufacturers, please consider taking a page out of Nokia's playbook and offer a device loaner program I liked the idea of the lab days that Google ran. I went to the first or second (cannot remember) about a year ago. I thought it was a great start to at least be able to scope out the problems involving different devices; they had a variety on hand and all sorts of issues were immediately apparent. I am talking issues that are driven by the actual hardware (and their driver SW), such as incompatible accelerometer sensors (hello Samsung Galaxy), differing camera hardware (hello Motorola Droid/Milestone), resistive touch screens (hello HTC Tattoo) that make certain UI interactions unpractical. I am sure, with the slew of new devices, the list goes on and on. Yet, unless I missed something, there haven't been any lab day-like activities in months. So 2. Google, please bring back and build out the lab days Google and manufacturers were pushing out devices to devs through the device seeing program. I got a Droid out of it, which has been helpful, so 3. Google and manufacturers, please keep the device seeding program going
JP On Jul 5, 8:36 pm, "Maps.Huge.Info (Maps API Guru)" <[email protected]> wrote: > First off, I want to thank Google for giving me a bunch of Android > devices over the last year. I currently have three different phones, a > Google ION, HTC Evo and a Droid. > > I've been receiving reports of weird bugs since 2.1 was released, I'd > hoped they'd magically clear with 2.1-update1 but they haven't. The > bugs are for specific devices and can't be tested in the emulator. > > On the Droid, I had a reoccurring loop when the device was started and > held horizontally. Didn't happen on any other device. On the HTC Evo > and Incredible, odd freezes when the screen was panned. Didn't happen > on any other the other devices as far as I can tell. > > None of these problems caused a crash or even an error in the log. > They just caused the app to act weird. > > Testing with the physical devices for these bugs is absolutely > critical to resolving these issues. I found the Droid problem easily, > that one is fixed. The HTC problems still are present but I've managed > to mitigate them with some clever programming. > > Regardless of how things are supposed to work, in the real world, > having the actual devices in hand makes life a lot easier. It would be > great if the device manufacturers would create some sort of program > where we could get our hands on these things without signing up for > contracts or paying $500+ for each one. They could be units that > didn't pass quality control, scratch and dent models or returns, as > long as they worked on WiFi, that would be all that's necessary. > > -John Coryat -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
