So Google gave out phones at the Android Developer Labs, a boatload more phones for the top developers in the market based on downloads/rating, and now more for ADC2 participants.

I know a lot of developers that weren’t happy because they missed out on the free phones for Market Developers, but they may still get a chance as it looks like the Seeding program isn’t done.

Congratulations! You are one of the top 200 developers in round 1 of the Android Developer Challenge 2. To celebrate your success and encourage you to create more awesome Android apps, we would like to present you with a brand new Android device as part of our developer device seeding program.  

You will receive either a Verizon Droid by Motorola or a Nexus One. Developers with mailing addresses in the US will receive either a Droid or Nexus One, based on random distribution. Developers from Canada, EU, and the EEA states (Norway, Lichtenstein), Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore will receive a Nexus One. Developers with mailing addresses in countries not listed above will not receive a phone since these phones are not certified to be used in other countries.   

Please do not request specific phones; allocation will be by random distribution and we will be unable to accommodate individual requests. Please allow 2-4 weeks from today for delivery of the phone. If you have any questions or if you have a change of address, please send an email immediately to android-market-seeding@google.com.  

We hope that you will enjoy your new device and continue to build more insanely popular apps for Android!   

Thanks, Android Developer Programs

But I think I’ve found my Analytics provider for my Android apps. There aren’t as many choice compared to the iPhone right now, so I’m sure things will change in a few months.

As of January 12, 2010, though, here are my notes from looking into Android App Analytics providers. I’m sure there are others, but I lost interest in evaluating any more.

1. Flurry

I’d looked at Flurry quite some time ago, but balked when they required adding LOCATION permissions to your app’s manifest before using their analytics package. They’ve change it now so all they require is android.permission.INTERNET.

The location permissions are optional (android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION or android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION).

This is who I ended up going with. No complaints about the info they provide. All the usual stuff: users, sessions, customizable events, devices, carrier, firmware info.

Actually, one pleasant surprise was that they tracked errors happening with my apps in the field that I had no idea about.

Flurry Rants – ok, I do have a couple of complaints:
- Their main site doesn’t have a lot of details. It’s mostly fluffy marketing stuff. You have to sign up before finding out anything.
- The documentation isn’t the easiest to find on their developer site and it’s pretty minimal as it is.

2. Motally

I wanted to go with Motally because I just moved my iPhone apps to them and have all my apps in one place, but I ran into a quick showstopper.

Make sure to add the following permissions in your application’s AndroidManifest.xml
• <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE”/>
• <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE”/>
• <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE”/>
• <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION”/>
• <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.INTERNET”/>

WOW! Location permissions are required and also READ_PHONE_STATE!  I’m sure my users will love it if I add all those.

Pass.

I’ve been told that the next version will make more permissions optional, so I’ll re-evaluate them down the road.

3. mobilytics

No dice. Still in Private Beta.

4. Localytics

To be honest, I didn’t even get as far as signing up here. The Flash reports in the demo turned me off initially, and then when their wiki/documentation site was slow, I didn’t bother going any further.

5. Medialytics

I couldn’t sign up. Rats.

6. Google Analytics for Android

I’m surprised Google Analytics for Android isn’t the best option out there, but it looks like someone’s side project. It would be nice to have my Android analytics in the same place as my website analytics, but this looks like it hasn’t been updated in ages.

Here’s what I’ve seen as of Jan 5, 2010:

Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; Droid Build/ESD56)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0; Droid Build/ERD20)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0; Droid Build/ESD20)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0; Milestone Build/SHOLS_U2_01.03.1)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0; sdk Build/ECLAIR)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; Nexus One Build/ERD62)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; Nexus One Build/ERD72)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; Nexus One Build/ERD79)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android Eclair Build/ERC90)
Dalvik/1.1.0 (Linux; U; Android AOSP Build/MASTER)
Java0

One thing I’ve been tracking is that while these two apps are essentially the same app, it’s MUCH more popular on Android than on the iPhone.

Android Market vs. iPhone App Store
Here’s a quick screenshot of the current Android Market stats:


Prayers to Share is getting between 250-500 downloads per day in the Android Market. But the same iPhone app gets 25-50 downloads per day through the App Store.

The 10x difference is no doubt due to ease of discoverability on the Android Market vs. the App Store. It’s a Top 20 Most Popular App in the Social Category of the Android Market and is easy for new users to find while it’s buried in the iPhone App store listings.

Red States vs. Blue States
But I had a funny conversation the other day about Verizon Red States and AT&T Blue States. It was probably a result of being hammered over the head by too many Verizon commercials, but more likely due to too much caffeine.

Here’s the gist of it:

“Those Verizon commercials with the Red and Blue maps remind me of Republican Red states and Democratic blue states.”

“If you actually look at the AT&T blue map in the commercial, it’s pretty sad. It looks like it’s just the coasts and major metropolitan areas.

There’s some truth to those commercials. People I know in NYC and the West Coast love their iPhones, but my friends in the midwest won’t even consider an iPhone because AT&T coverage is so poor near them. Not just 3G coverage, they have a bad perception of any AT&T coverage in their area.

Maybe that’s why Prayers to Share does better in devout Verizon Red States than wicked AT&T Blue States.

Well, there have been several prayers for God to end abortion from Android phones and one person even prayed for Obama to be shot.

Hmm, maybe I should just focus on pious Android apps for Red States since the amoral iPhone app market is pretty crowded.”

OK, maybe I should cut back on the caffeine.

It’s a little tricky finding the most popular “things to do before you die” because people phrase things differently, but here’s the Top 20 Most Popular Bucket List Items shared so far on both apps.

Most Popular iPhone and Android Bucket List Items
1. Skydiving (#1 by far)
2. Get married
3. Swim with dolphins
4. Get a tattoo
5. Go on a cruise
6. Write a book
7. Go to Hawaii
8. Scuba Dive
9. Run a marathon
10. Buy a house
11. See the pyramids
12. Have kids
13. Go to Italy
14. Go to Vegas
15. Fall in love
16. See the northern lights
17. Visit Australia
18. Go to Ireland
19. Bungee Jump
20. Hot Air Balloon

I’d only tested my apps on a G1, so I was anxious to test these phones out.  Especially since I get numerous complaints about Force Closes on other phones which I’m unable to reproduce on my device.  At least with my iPhone apps, I can get Crash Reports through iTunes, so I have a better clue what’s going on with those crashes.

Here are the phones they made available for us (and the OS version):
Motorola Droid (Android 2.0)
HTC Hero (Android 1.5)
LG ??? (Android 1.5) [I guess the name wasn't catchy enough for me to remember]
HTC Hero (Android 1.5)
HTC Tattoo (Android 1.6)
Samsung Galaxy (Android 1.5)

I only had time to test 3 phones, but here are my impressions.

HTC Tattoo
The first phone I check out was the HTC Tattoo.  It’s a nice small phone, but I don’t know if the choice to go with QVGA (240×320) was worth it.  This phone caused the most buzz around the room, but not for good reasons.  Many people were complaining how their apps looked on the Tattoo.

I admit that I’ve optimized my apps for HVGA(320×480), and made many UI decisions based on this.  My biggest problem on the Tattoo is that I have 4 buttons along the bottom of my screen, which doesn’t fit the Tattoo at all.  The far right button ends up just getting cutoff.  Plus the buttons look really large and fuzzy, kind of embarrassing.

There are solutions to this that require some effort, so I decided to punt and look at other devices.  To be honest, unless I see that HTC is selling tons of these phones, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort to make it work.

Plus, my apps don’t even show up in the Android Market on the HTC Tattoo.  My apps don’t explicitly state in the manifest that they’ll display correctly at QVGA, so they don’t show up in the Tattoo Market.  If people were downloading my apps on a Tattoo and getting a bad user experience, I’d look into fixing this, but I’m going make this device a low priority unless sales are outstanding.

Another weird oddity from a user perspective:  I had problems using this touchscreen.  Whenever I tried to scroll, it would select what I was touching.  I didn’t spend a lot of time investigating this, but it’s something I didn’t encounter on any other Android devices or the iPhone or the Pre.

Samsung Galaxy
I was very impressed with this phone.  It might be my favorite Android phone if not for the Droid.  No complaints about this phone from a developer perspective. (probably because it’s running Android 1.5 and has a normal 320×480 display).

The biggest problem with this phone is that it looks like a toy next to the Droid.

Motorola Droid
The Droid lives up to the hype!  If I were on Verizon I would get one immediately.  The screen is massive and beautiful.

When I first used it, it reminded me more of a tablet or computer than a phone.  Partially because the edges remind me more of a picture frame than the sleek, slimming iPhone style edges.

The Droid’s resolution (854×480) didn’t cause too many problems.  The biggest problem with my apps was that my fonts were tiny and unreadable.  This was an easy fix, though.  I changed my fonts from Points (ex: 10pt) to Scale-independent Pixels (16sp), and things were great on the droid and other devices.

Unfortunately that was all I was able to test since there were limited numbers of each phone and waiting lists.

So I’ve been trying out an Android phone for a couple of weeks now (ADP1), and it’s not a bad device. I’d heard grumbling about it, so I was pleasantly surprised. I like the physical keyboard much better than the Palm Pre’s or the Nokia E75’s.

My biggest complaint is a software one, and a UI one at that. I don’t like the standard Tabs. I’ve seen other rants about the Tabs on Android, but I don’t really mind the huge, blocky, drab look. It kind of goes along with the clunk Android buttons and fits the whole utilitarian, unapologetically, non-sexy Android vibe.

I don’t like the placement of the built-in Android tabs, specifically how they’re on the top of the screen. Sure you can roll your own, but a lot of apps use the standard tabs.

Even Androids Get the Blues

It’s not like I have sausage fingers either. I have fairly large hands, but it’s still a cumbersome move to reach a top left tab with my thumb when operating the phone one-handed. Maybe the Android team has freakish, Uma Thurman-like thumbs. When using an app with tabs on top, I usually end up switching to holding the phone in my left hand and using my right index finger.

I definitely lean toward tabs on the bottom of the screen (as well as on-screen buttons). It puts most of the primary actions close to the physical buttons (menu, home, back, etc.) Plus it keeps your thumb from blocking you from seeing things happening on the screen.

The HTC Hero got many things right. One thing I especially like is how they do their tabs.

So when it came time to do the UI for an Android app that I’m working on (Practice Speaking English, below right), I decided to screw the standard tabs and emulate the HTC tabs (below left). (as well as iPhone tabs too)

July 21
Web Map Social Mountain View, 7pm
NASA WorldWind, Brightkite, WeoGeo + networking

July 22
Silicon Valley Android Developers Palo Alto, 6:30pm
App demos and how to program in Android

July 27
iPhone Business Meetup Santa Clara, 6pm
Challenges and Opportunities for iPhone in Enterprises

July 28
Verizon Developer Conference San Jose, CA

July 28
Palm Pre, Mojo, and webOS Meetup Sunnyvale, 7pm

August 7
GTUG Campout Mountain View
Weekend Hackathon on Google Technologies

July 14 San Francisco Android Users Group, San Francisco

July 20-24 OSCON 2009, San Jose

July 31-Aug 2 iPhone Dev Camp 3, Sunnyvale

[Probably Delayed] Pre Dev Camp, San Francisco

Aug 12-13 Open Source World/Foss Dev Camp, San Francisco

The Android sessions look great:
* Android 101: Building an Application
* Anatomy & Physiology of an Android
* Dalvik Internals
* Inside the Android Application Framework
* Building Great UIs with Android
* Internationalizing Android Applications
* Location, Location, Location
* Mobile Mashups

More details here.

Wow, May is going to be busy with Where 2.0, WhereCamp, and now Google I/O.