I run my own consulting business (no, not a shameless plug, because if I said "Hey, I run my own insanely cool consulting business called Refresh-IT Consulting, and you can contact me at brian@refresh-it.co.za for excellent customer service and a wealth of knowledge into anything you may need" then THAT would be a shameless plug. Now, can we move on please? Thanks)
A month ago my business partner called me and asked how I would fare in getting a 30" touch screen Android phone working for a client of his for a trade show. I said that it shouldn't be a problem, but I would check it out and get back to him.
So I spent the next 2 days doing a little research and it turned out that I was sure I could do it.
I emailed him and said that we could get this done, he confirmed with the client and we were a for away. The minor detail of it having to be finished in 5 days was something that was mentioned a little later, which, I am sure you can imagine was not a pleasant experience, but nevertheless, I found a solution.
So, what was it that I needed to do?
Basically, the client was releasing a new mobile phone, and they wanted me to get the touch screen functionality running for the screen portion. They were going to build a "phone" body around the screen to make it look like a real device.
The initial spec looked like this:
So I downloaded the Android emulator, and got to work on creating the Froyo OS inside the screen.
The irony of the fact that I used Windows 7 to get the emulator running and functional is most certainly not lost on me.
So, anyway, after a lot of tinkering with sizes for the screen, which took me a few days of understanding the layout structure of the emulator Window, I got it looking pretty funky.
The only serious issue was getting the functional buttons as specified on the screen of the new device. The device had not been released, and therefore there was no skin for it in the emulator, or anywhere on the web. The following pic is what the standard Froyo skin looks like with the keyboard, giving you the functionality, but not the same look as the device.
The big issue was the keyboard, or, the lack thereof on the standard screen of the mobile device I was working with.
I needed to get the device to look precisely the same as the mobile, so I could not use the standard skins as supplied by Android in the emulator.
So, I searched the web and luckily found another device with the same navigation buttons (Nexus One), downloaded and installed the skin.
I spent the next few days using Gimp to modify the skin to suit my needs and then set about messing with the layout of the screen again.
This gave me the same look and feel and using the nav buttons on the screen I was able to get the device fully functional.
It's no joke trying to get the nav buttons on the skin I downloaded and the functional layout of the screen working together. I spent many hours moving the x and y axis of the buttons to match the skin, but I got it eventually, and it worked like a charm!
5 days, and a LOT of Red Bull later, we had a functional demo to the client, which looked like this:
I must say that I was very impressed with 2 technologies during my time working on this.
1. Windows 7 Touch >> WOW! It just works, no issues with drivers, or configuration. Boot up with the screen installed and its go go go. This is why I love Windows.
2. Android Emulator >> Again, this is just so damn easy to use. Once I had my head around the basics of the app, it became so simple to use. Learning to use the layout config file and the sizing was relatively simple. Kudos guys, very good job.
Anyway, we were 1 day from the device being shipped to the show, and I was told of some "minor" details, such as the sizing that they gave me, was wrong. *sigh*
So I spent the next day furiously working on the new sizing and fixing up the look, but once done it was shipped off and the show was done.
All good!
Client happy, me happy. A new geeky adventure had been started, and I think I may tinker a lot more with this, to the point of potentially developing some apps for Android. So watch this space, you may see some gems coming from yours truly.
Here are some pics of the finished product, which looks DAMN FINE if you ask me.
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