By the end of 2014, Gartner
says Android and Nokia's Symbian operating system will each account for
about 30 percent of global smartphone sales, while Apple's iOS will be
third with about 15 percent of the global market, and RIM will be fourth
with about 12 percent.

Security researchers have found that Vodafone, one of the world's larger wireless providers, is distributing some HTC phones with malware pre-installed on them. The phone, the HTC Magic, runs the Google Android mobile operating system, and is one of the more popular handsets right now. A researcher at Panda Security received one of the handsets recently, and upon attaching it to her PC, found that the phone was pre-loaded with the Mariposa bot client. Mariposa has been in the news of late thanks to some arrests connected to the operation of the botnet.

If you have developed your Android application with the 1.5 SDK (or earlier), then your application won’t show up on the Android Market for users with devices with a lower screen resolution, like for instance the HTC Tattoo.
This is of course very unfortunate for both the user and you! The user won’t be able to use your wonderful application, and you’re missing out on an entire user base. This is a user base that is, growing and growing, since the smaller size devices are very popular among people that usually wouldn’t consider the larger smartphones.
But don’t despair, with just a couple of minor fixes you’ll be able support the smaller devices as well, since the Android OS, and the 1.6 version of the SDK handles most things for you.
Please note that nothing that I describe here affects your other users who use Android 1.5 and earlier. If you compile using the 1.6 SDK, users using Android 1.5 (and earlier) will still be able to use your application without any problems, and it will still show up on the Android market for them. It’s only if you use any API’s that was introduced in 1.6 that will require that users run Android 1.6 or newer.
What needs to be done?
Android 1.5 and earlier versions of the platform were designed to support a single screen configuration — HVGA (320×480) resolution on a 3.2″ screen. Because the platform targeted just one screen, you could write your application specifically for that screen, without needing to worry about how your application would be displayed on other screens. So by default Android Market hides all those 1.5 and earlier applications that hasn’t explicitly defined that they support lower resolution screens from devices such as the HTC Tattoo.
Starting from Android 1.6, the platform adds support for multiple screen sizes and resolutions. But usually not much needs to be done from what I’ve heard from other developers. This is probably due to that the Android platform handles most of the work of adapting your app to the current screen by running it in a compatibility mode. So you only need to make some changes to AndroidManifest.xml, recompile with the 1.6 SDK and you’re set to go.
Note! If your applications needs to you can create screen-specific resources for precise control of your UI, but this is usually not needed.
Getting it to show on Android Market
First we need to change some things in the AndroidManifest.xml. Start by adding targetSdkVersion to uses-sdk. With this setting we are saying that we run against Android 1.6 (the value 4) the minimum requirement is Android 1.5 (the value 3).
<uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion=”3″ android:targetSdkVersion=”4″ />
This should be enough according to the SDK documentation, but I’ve heard from some developers that they also need to explicitly define the screen resolution settings.
<supports-screens android:largeScreens=”true” android:normalScreens=”true” android:smallScreens=”true” android:anyDensity=”true” />
After you made these changes, compiled your application with the 1.6 version of the Android SDK and published it to the Android market, it should be available for all your users. Here’s also a complete example of a manifest that supports the Tattoo.
More information
There’s a longer article in the Android developer documentation which describes how you work with different screen sizes, and you can find it here.
Testing
To begin with I’m not a very experienced Android developer, but then again who is ;), so some of the information in this article can be off. I can unfortunately not help you out that much with the coding and technical details. But I’m an Android user, a developer on several other platforms, and I have many years of experience in software testing and hunting down software problems. I’m also dedicated to getting as many applications up and running on the Tattoo as possible, and I’m a sucker for testing out new exciting apps, so I can help you out with the testing of your application on a real device. I do this for free and no strings attached.
Contact me and I’ll help you out with the testing our I’ll try to answer any questions that you have.
Why should you bother?
There is a bunch of reasons why you should do the little extra work of supporting lower screen resolutions.
There are several more devices in the pipeline that uses the lower screen resolution.
A lot of people prefer devices like the Tattoo, not only for the low introduction price, but also for the smaller size. When I show the Tattoo around, a lot more people gets interested in the smaller device, than they get when I show them a larger smartphone. So sales in this segment will increase, as well as the user base.
If you code properly it wont be much work, and you will also have code that is much easier to port for those super cool larger displays.
The good feeling of doing it right and being a kick ass developer that can code for all the devices
It usually isn’t that much work, it could be just editing the manifest
My undying gratitude ;)
Thanks to Johan Nilsson for sharing the information about the Tattoo manifest changes on the Swedroid forums. Without this as a springboard I don’t think that this article would have been written.

Lag og tilpass en ROM til HTC Hero akkurat som det passer deg - velg mellom forskjellige inkluderte applikasjoner, hvilken kernel du ønsker osv.

New Survey Shows Android OS Roiling the Smart Phone Market
By Paul Carton and Jean Crumrine
January 4, 2010
Google's (GOOG) Android mobile operating system was released more than a year ago, midst high expectations it would change the smart phone market. But the big transformation never materialized – until now.
ChangeWave's December 9-14 survey of 4,068 consumers shows the Android operating system roiling the smart phone market, with Motorola's new Droid smart phone the biggest and most immediate beneficiary.
Among respondents who currently own a smart phone, 4% say they're currently using Google's Android operating system – a 3-pt jump since our survey in September.
But more importantly, 21% of those planning to buy a smart phone in the next 90 days say they'd prefer to have the Android OS on their new phone – a monstrous 15-pt jump in just three months.

Much more interesting, though, are the conversations with Google that
we’ve confirmed. The two companies sketched out a plan where Spotify’s
excellent Android application would be build into the 2.1 version of
Android and would launch in the U.S. with the Google
Nexus One phone on January 5. The
application – which is available in Europe and allows for offline
syncing of songs – would give Google a much needed competitive answer to
Apple’s iTunes. The Android could realistically be seen as a media
consumption device, like the iPhone, with things like Spotify built into
it.

I'm pleased to present version 2 of my MoDaCo Custom Hero ROM! No 'wipe' is required for anyone coming from MCR 1.2 onwards, or the stock 2.73.x updates.This ROM is based on the 2.73.x release series (together with my own optimisations) for the best possible performance!

If you like the MoDaCo Custom ROMs, consider supporting MoDaCo by visiting the subscriptions page and upgrading your account or making a donation via PayPal by clicking this link.P

Finally a reason to root your HTC Hero if you haven’t already! And if you have then something to do with the new found root access. Load a ROM!
Before you begin make sure you have done our How To Root Your HTC Hero in One Click! procedure.

Here is the quick way to gain flash a custom recovery image so you can then load a custom ROM and have root access and all the goodies that come with custom ROM amazingness!

You’ve seen the demos, we’ve gotten the approvals and now Spotify is mobile.
Today we’re really excited to announce that Spotify is available to our premium subscribers for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android platforms. The Spotify app is downloadable in both Apple’s App Store and the Android Market.
We’ve worked hard to bring you the same great Spotify experience you’re already familiar with to your phone. The mobile apps will allow you to take the entire Spotify catalogue and put it in your pocket. You can use our ‘offline mode’ to make playlists available at all times, even when no connection is available, perfect for that ride on the tube or long flight across the Atlantic.
Launching these apps is our first step at going mobile and we’d like to thank all the people who worked hard on making this happen as well as all the partners involved in the process.
We’ve set up a mobile section with more details and we look forward to hearing your thoughts. We know that you’ve been eagerly awaiting this launch and we appreciate the patience – now go out and get that app!