Mips tablets

Scouser · May 2012

I have noticed that a lot of android tablets coming over from China are based around Xburst Mips processors and the new android-ndk-r8 now supports these Mips devices. My question is, are there any plans to add support for these processors. It would seem a sensible thing to do as without it there is a huge market we as developers cannot tap into.

Moreso for developers out there focusing on eBooks and would like to exploit the Chinese market.

more information can be found here but to add support seems to be a simple change to your application.mk by changing the APP_ABI line to APP_ABI := armeabi armeabi-v7a mips.

atilim · May 2012

@Scouser good idea. But I think we should export Mips project differently to not to increase the app size with another 2.5mb Mips .so file.

(And I've coded some parts assuming the arch is always little endian. It's time to update them also)

Scouser · May 2012

@atilim: I'm not too sure how exporting the project differently would work as the exported android project should support both types of CPU. Many of the owners of these tablets won't know what CPU is in their device so having separate versions for MIPS and ARM would only confuse users more.

Scouser · June 2012

Another scary thought, here in the UK, Orange have just launched the San Diego, an Intel Atom Z2460 (Medfield) powered Android phone. Any views on this one.

techdojo · June 2012

Yes - yet MORE Android fragmentation - joy! :-(

Scouser · June 2012

Typical Intel trying to muscle into a market they don't belong and are not wanted.

techdojo · June 2012

The problem isn't necessarily Intel's or Orange's for that matter but us as developers, the vast majority of customers who walk into a shop and buy a smart phone, aren't going to know or care what processor is in it (hence the outcry when Ansca dropped ArmV6 support), the customer (quite rightly) will just expect their app to work. Pure Java apps should be fine but add a native plugin or use the NDK to get any sense of decent speed out of your app and blam - that's another market share lost

Scouser · June 2012

@techdojo: That was the point I was trying to make in my earlier posts about the MIPS CPUs. At the moment the native lua implementation already requires 2 x 2.5MB binaries, one for ARMv6 and another for ARMv7, now with these new devices, each requiring their own 2.5MB build would make any Android apps ~10MB before any graphics, sound, music or lua files are added.

I can see @atilim's point now and maybe 3 separate builds with their own supported device settings would be the way to go.

I'm not too sure how to do it but I know you can flag your app to not support certain devices but how that would work in the real world is anybody's guess.

techdojo · June 2012

and people wonder why Apple are winning the war...

Scouser · June 2012

That's not down to Google or Android, that's down to the nature of big business wanting to do things their way. Google originally laid down a list of specifications that devices had to meet if they wanted Google's support and access to Google's apps like Market, Gmail, Maps etc. Manufacturers decided they didn't need Google's support or apps and went their own way. That is why there is so much fragmentation. The argument about apple devices just working cos there was no fragmentation is also a mute point as there are at least 5 or 6 different screen resolutions currently which is set to increase with the addition of the mini iPad and iPhone 5 later this year.

techdojo · June 2012

With Apple there are two classes of device, the phone / pod and the tablet.
The phone is 320x480 and the tablet is 768x1024 - then both devices can potentially have retina displays which are exactly double the resolution (which can be handled automagically through the use of @2x resources).

The only bugbear is that the phone and tablet don't have the same aspect ratio, which can be awkward, but if you just keep thinking of the tablet as a retina phone + a safe area that extends round the edges it can also be handled quite easily.

Personally I think the mini-iPad is vapour ware, but if it ever does exist I'm sure it'll have the same res as the other pad. Also I can't see the iPhone 5 upping the res as there comes a point where it's just not relevant any more (unless they up the screen size significantly - then it becomes a tablet!)

Michal · June 2012

I have some idea, hope it if reasonable. I would propose adding cpu info to Gideros. Then the application could check which CPU it runs on, and then download any device-specific resources (both *.so libraries and graphics). AFAIK some large games on Google Play do something like this (checking first if the device is supported at all).
Of course that would require the "exported" resources to be available on=line, and some implementation within the game logic (using luasocket maybe?).

OZApps · June 2012

On a side note on the fragmentation, Nokia had just three options, S40, S60 and S80/S90
Most of the high end phones had S80/S90 the medium range were S60 and the low end S40. It is still kind of similar, the High end are iPhones

On the serious side of things, There should be stricter rules around the devices like (thankfully) Microsoft did, allowing only a few variants. That way you will not have every little half-breed device of Android running around town and less issues for developers.

I simply dislike the current situation even with Apple, having an 320x480, 640x960, 1024x768 and 1536x2048 resolutions to cater for.

techdojo · June 2012

@Michal - I second that idea (and I'm sure @Scouser will too), he was actually looking to implement that as a plugin so he could decide which set of graphics to load on his Android game, just swapping from a 480x800 set to a 320x480 set made a big impact on the speed of his game on a ZTE Blade (which has a native 480x800 res) but with hardly any impact on the visuals (although maybe that say's more about his art skills) - sorry Glenn! I'll go and put the kettle on

atilim · June 2012

@Michal good idea but there is a technical problem here. when you install the .apk file, the correct .so file is extracted and copied to a read-only directory and then loaded from there automatically. It's really hard to download the device specific .so file from a server and install within the application.

@techdojo many games use NDK and I think it will be hard to find good games for MIPS and Intel based devices.

edit: maybe Intel tries to convince us?

unlying · September 2013

I have a contact with Intel now about support and optimize my application for their devices.
Any news about x86 support?

unlying · October 2013

This is how to port NDK app for x86:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/using-the-android-x86-ndk-with-eclipse-and-porting-an-ndk-sample-app

But we need libs for gideros, yes?
I have tried just add to Application.mk "x86", but it gives nothing.

atilim · October 2013

We've decided to include x86 binaries with the next release. If anyone wants them beforehand, just contact us.

unlying · October 2013

Wohoo! Great!!! Thanks! I can test it.

john26 · October 2013

Great idea to include x86 binaries. This is also the first step toward PC and Mac OSX apps. (hint)

unlying · October 2013

any news about that?

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