Hi all ! This my challenge for today : to develop a “Hello World” application for Android,  put it up and running on my HTC Desire, and blog about the experience the whole time! To keep the time record accurate, I’ll use a very good and free task manager called “Grindstone2” .  I’ve created 2 different task types to account for both time installing and on breaks.

As I haven’t implemented a self-refresh mecanism for this post only, you’ll have to press F5 to check for news ! Ready ? Here we gooooo….. 🙂

[19:25 GMT ]  The quest begins !

[19:30 GMT] Found the link to prepare my developing environment here !

[19:37 GMT] Downloading Eclipse and Android start kit…

[19:47 GMT] Started the Android start kit and chosed the following options to begin with

[20:00] The android kit seemed to install the required packages just fine. I’m now going to install now de ADT plugin tools for eclipse. After adding the site https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/ to the resources tool, i ticked the following options :

I’ll make now a 1 hour break , and return to this shortly after ! Stay tuned !

[21:08 GMT]  Back to work ! After installing the ADT plugin and restarting Eclipse i must now point ADT to the directory where i previously extracted the Android SDK. I can now manage all my Android dependencies from Eclipse ! Great !!

[21:15 GMT]  Just begin reading the page Hello World Android and following the tutorial

[21:33 GMT] After creating the android project I got an error : Unable to open class file R.java . This apparently was solved by cleaning up the project. Now i’ve just added some code to build the U.I. .

Ufff time is ticking!!

[21:44 GMT] I’ve sucessfully run the application and I’m wondering how i will put this to work on my HTC.

[22:00 GMT] Now this is a bit puzzling…After building this “Hello Reader App” , the next steps aren’t that obvious! I’ve googled a bit and found out here that there are 2 ways to put applications on your mobile phone :

1. Through the Android Market
2. Using the Android SDK

I believe the first option will take more time so I’ll try the second option and post the results!

[22:11 GMT] Still wondering how to do it…

[22:30 GMT] Now this was really a nooooooo brainer ! 🙁 Here are the steps i took to put it to work on my HTC  Desire!

1. Make sure you have some file browser already installed on your mobile phone. I recommend Astro File Manager and you can download it from the Android Market
2. Connect your mobile phone to your PC via usb connection
3. On your mobile go to Settings > Applications a tick the option “Install from unknown sources”
4. Go to /Hello Android/bin/ and copy the file HelloAndroid.apk from here to any directory of your choice on your mobile phone.
5. Disconnect your phone from the USB connection to your PC.
6. Open your file manager, or Astro File Manager, and look for your application
7. Click on the application and choose “Open App Manager” and then install !
8. That’s it !!!

According to the Grindstone software I only took , 1h 48min 52 seconds to achieve it and took 1h 24 min 25 seconds in break time ! Not bad, considering I was expecting to take 5 hours to do this. I promise i’ll try to post when possible a snapshot picture of the “Hello Android App” running on my HTC.

[Update !!]

As promised , here are the final pictures !!

Android app icon:

Android App, Hello World , displaying : “Hello , dear Reader!”