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Develop applications

If you are interested in developing applications for Android, visit the Android application developer site.

About Android

For general information, visit android.com.

Roadmap

The Android Open Source Project will publish roadmaps for upcoming releases. The roadmaps will be developed with input from this community, Project Leads, and the Open Handset Alliance. The following are our initial thoughts, but this list will evolve as we receive feedback from the community. Feel free to share your thoughts at android-platform mailing list. The timings below are rough outlines and subject to change.

Q4 2008
Localization

The UI and Application Framework for the Android 1.0 platform primarily targets English-speaking regions. To enable handset manufacturers to deploy devices in non-English-speaking countries, we will support the following localizations:
  • Strings localized into various languages.
    • Q4 2008: German
    • Q1 2009: French, Italian, es_es, zh_TW, Ja, NL, CZ
  • UI modifications (tabs, menus, homepage shortcuts, etc.) to support non-English languages.
  • New date and numeric formats.

Support for multiple APNs

This feature will enable the different applications to connect to different Access Point Nodes (APNs). For example, a web browser can connect to an Internet APN connection while the MMS can connect to a separate MMS APN.

SIM application toolkit (STK)

This feature will enable the SIM to initiate actions for various operator-specific value-added services.

Final push of internal code to the open-source repositories

During Android's transition to an open-source project, some development has continued to happen in a private branch.  We are working to move the rest of these changes into the open as soon as possible, and all future open-source work will happen in the public git repositories.  All changes that have already been submitted to the public repositories will be merged into the newer code base, so nothing should be lost.

See this document for information on the "cupcake" development branch, a mirror of the private branch.

Q1 2009

Input method framework (IMF)

This feature will enable support for input methods other than physical keyboards, for example soft keyboards. IMF will also enable application developers to provide IME (see below) applications based on the framework.

Input method engines (IME)

IME will support soft keyboards, a dictionary of suggestions, and a suggestion algorithm. The Android platform may contain a few reference IMEs, and developers can provide IME applications through the Android Market.

Beyond Q1 2009

Support for additional types of displays:

Support for WVGA and QVGA, in addition to the currently supported HVGA display.