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I'm thinking of changing my handset in the near future and currently I have a Nokia N95. I'm a little undecided on either Android or Windows Mobile. Android looks very promising but the HTC Touch HD2 is looking very good. If I was to go Android, I'm probably looking at the Hero or maybe if I can wait for the X10.
However my main concern is actually getting some apps which will replicate what I can currently do with my aging N95. I suppose if there is no available app then it'll make my choice between Android and WM a whole lot easier.
If it's not too much trouble, if some experienced WM/Android users could give me the names of some apps that I require it'd be much appreciated.
Call recorder - Needs to automatically record calls in the background with no beep if possible. Would be nice for it to be able to manually record clips with hotkeys from main screen.
Network client to access network shares, mainly windows shares but sometimes linux (NFS) (guess this is no problem for WM, but for Android?)
Weather application - I've seen this in action already on the HD2, not sure about Android.
Convertor application - Converts currencies (able to retrieve latest rates) and measurements, volumes, etc.
VNC/Remote desktop client - Again, should be easy for WM, but for Android?
SSH client - Needs to be able to tunnel so I can have access to secure connections when using free wifi. (I think I saw ConnectBot for Android, no idea for WM)
Application that can automatically switch profiles (silent, ring, etc.) based on a set of rules such as time or (even better) by location
Media player application (think this is built into WM - but what codecs can it play?)
Many thanks
kai_ said:
I'm thinking of changing my handset in the near future and currently I have a Nokia N95. I'm a little undecided on either Android or Windows Mobile. Android looks very promising but the HTC Touch HD2 is looking very good. If I was to go Android, I'm probably looking at the Hero or maybe if I can wait for the X10.
However my main concern is actually getting some apps which will replicate what I can currently do with my aging N95. I suppose if there is no available app then it'll make my choice between Android and WM a whole lot easier.
If it's not too much trouble, if some experienced WM/Android users could give me the names of some apps that I require it'd be much appreciated.
Call recorder - Needs to automatically record calls in the background with no beep if possible. Would be nice for it to be able to manually record clips with hotkeys from main screen.
Network client to access network shares, mainly windows shares but sometimes linux (NFS) (guess this is no problem for WM, but for Android?)
Weather application - I've seen this in action already on the HD2, not sure about Android.
Convertor application - Converts currencies (able to retrieve latest rates) and measurements, volumes, etc.
VNC/Remote desktop client - Again, should be easy for WM, but for Android?
SSH client - Needs to be able to tunnel so I can have access to secure connections when using free wifi. (I think I saw ConnectBot for Android, no idea for WM)
Application that can automatically switch profiles (silent, ring, etc.) based on a set of rules such as time or (even better) by location
Media player application (think this is built into WM - but what codecs can it play?)
Many thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, I've been using android for the past six month (never touched WinMo) so hopefully I can help out
1) Call Recorder - No idea, I really don't think this is possible on Android at the moment
2) Next work shares - There are apps in the market for accessing files, but I'm not sure if they will suit your needs
3) Weather - If you get a Hero, you will have HTC's very nice forecast app, very similar to the one present in TouchFlo on WinMo phones. Which has widgets of several sizes. There are also apps in the market which offer more functionalitybut aren't quite so sexy.
4) Currency conversion - Haven't installed one because I haven't needed it, but I'm sure there will be one in the market.
5) VNC - There are a couple of free VNC apps in the market which are both very good.
6) SSH - No idea, sorry.
7) Profiles - There's an app in the market called "Locale" which I'm fairly sure does everything you asked for
8) Media Player - This is where android falls short. Mp4 or 3gp are the only natively supported codecs, and I've yet to see an app which supports any more.
SSH with COnnectBot
Hey, XDA. This is a copy and paste of a post to '/r/wp7dev' on Reddit I made a few minutes ago, and I'm not yet able to post links sadly.
I took out my Toshiba Gigabeat S the other day, which I've pretty much abandoned when I got my Focus. I kind of missed the amazingness of Rockbox.
The short time that I had a loaner iPhone 3G, I had installed iDroid on it and the Rockbox for Android port too, and it worked well. (I was the first person to get Rockbox working on an iPhone, [kind of!])
So now, I'm thinking about how cool it'd be to have Rockbox on my shiny Windows Phone 7.5 Samsung Focus...
I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the term, aside from dabbling here and there, but I do have the whole VS2010 for WP7 and an official student dev unlocked phone and all that, and got to tinkering with the source from Rockbox's Android port (I had this linked, search for Rockbox Android port). (I figure it'd be the most sensible to try with their Android port than any of their device specific variants.)
Obviously, I have no idea what I'm doing. I was able to find a porting guide for Android to WP7 APIs (I had this linked, search for Windows Phone Android mapping) and it looks like a lot of the objects translate well, plus Java and C# are fairly similar to each other, and are translatable (also linked, search for Java C# comparison).
I'm aware of some of the limitations with file system access and native applications, etc. with WP7, so I know the whole porting process won't be a 1-2-3-done kind of deal. But it definitely looks doable.
It seems that something like this might need an Interop-unlocked device for it to fully run, but I figure anyone who'd even want Rockbox would already have that done.
Rockbox would be great for WP7 because:
- it supports gapless playback
- it supports a gigantic variety of file formats
- crossfading is lovely
- EQ controls are superb, as are compression controls and balance and whatnot
- it has an excellent set of plugins like oscilloscope, vu meter, etc.
- plus, it'll look really cool Metro-fied.
If anyone with interest is able to help out with this, let me know. Then who knows, support for streaming gapless from a media server could even be done down the line.
tl;dr: a Mango/Metro-fied WP7 Rockbox using the source code from the Android port could be a super amazing thing for the audio playback options for the platform. Any assistance in doing this would be spectacular!
Rockbox for Android is not something I'm familiar with; the last time I looked at RockBox it was a full ROM replacement. You could technically do that with an HTC phone, I guess, but it would be very difficult to create the ROM and a complete waste of the hardware's other capabilities.
Integrating Rockbox functionality into a WP7 ROM is probably closer to what you're thinging of, but it still won't be easy. WP7 doesn't allow apps to replace core functionality built into the OS, so you'd need to create a custom ROM that uses Rockbox in place of the built-in media player.
I don't know how hard this woul be, but don't assume it would be easy. Android is pretty much nothing like WP7 internally. Android uses a Linux core, and apps for it are written using a Java variant or various native programming languages available for Linux. WP7 uses a Windows CE core, and apps for it are written using managed code or Windows native C++. Typically speaking, to port an app between the two system you must completely re-write it.
I do know that Windows Phone 7 uses C#, which is structurally similar to java. At that point it'd be a matter of porting over the java to C#, then figuring out the API equivalents. Still though, I don't know how possible this'd all be without native access to the device.
Hey everyone.
I'm the manager for a college radio station and I've got some programming experience at the university level, additionally two of my staff members are CompSci majors, so they've got even more experience than me.
The three of us were talking the other day and want to develop a mobile app for our radio station (we stream online), and really got excited about the idea.
I've been searching around on google for a bit, but I'm having trouble finding some documentation for writing applications to play MMS streams (which is how our station broadcasts) in Java (for android) and Obj-C (for iOS). I've found a few ancient libraries for Java (one caled JavaMMS, but it's only for downloading MMS streams), and everything I see for Objective-C suggests that MMS streams will be unplayable on iOS (which would suck).
I'm fairly new to a lot of this, but if anyone has some resources I could use to get started, it would be a huge help, as a lot of the Java references keep sending me back to JavaMMS, and I know there are apps on the Android market at least that play MMS streams, so it is possible.
So, just to make a clear question, what is required to set up an app to stream MMS in Java (and Obj-C if possible)?
Thanks in advanced to anyone who has some info
Hi guys,
I'm currently using an iPhone as my primary phone and android as a secondary one. I want to shift to windows phone (mango) but there are a few apps on the android not available on winmo which I can't live without. Is there any way to run android apps on the windows mobile the same way(or ANY way) its done on the blackberry play book?
Thanks
I don't think there's any. But there are alternate apps.
Android apps on WP7 would be incredibly difficult, though theoretically it could be done with enough effort.
Most Android apps use Dalvik (a dialect of Java). This is totally incompatible with the Silverlight/C# that WP7 apps use, but there are enough similarities between them that it might be possible to build a tool that either translates the Dalvik instructions to MSIL (the binary that compiling C# produces) at launch, or dynamically interprets it (the latter would be very slow, though).
However, even with purely Dalvik apps, there are other problems. WP7 apps are limited to a very restrictive sandbox, with no access to the vast majority of the filesystem (for example). Android apps, by comparison, have a great deal of access to the device they run on, so even a very simple app may expect to have permissions that wouldn't be available on WP7. Instead, attempts to access restricted parts of the filesystem would have to be "virtually" redirected within the sandbox. This is possible in many cases, but a *lot* of work to code and has all kinds of weird edge cases.
Additionally, Android apps have a very different runtime model from WP7 apps. The biggest change is in how they handle leaving the foreground; WP7 apps are either suspended or dehydrated, while Android apps often just keep running (they can elect to suspend, but aren't required to). WP7 does support background tasks (with strict limitations, at least if you stick to the official APIs), but moving the Android app runtime into those background tasks would be quite difficult.
Finally, there's the issue of hybrid apps (apps that use native code in addition to managed runtimes like Sliverlight or Dalvik). These are much more common on Android than on WP7 (at least, than on WP7 outside this webite). Android runs on a Linux kernel, using POSIX system calls and APIs. WP7 runs on a CE kernel, using win32 system calls and APIs. There's a very loose mapping from one to the other (see the Wine project for running Win32 apps on desktop Linux) but it adds a lot of overhead and would be another layer, at least as tricky as the managed part, to the difficulty of this project.
Short version: nope, sorry.
GoodDayToDie said:
Android apps on WP7 would be incredibly difficult, though theoretically it could be done with enough effort.
Most Android apps use Dalvik (a dialect of Java). This is totally incompatible with the Silverlight/C# that WP7 apps use, but there are enough similarities between them that it might be possible to build a tool that either translates the Dalvik instructions to MSIL (the binary that compiling C# produces) at launch, or dynamically interprets it (the latter would be very slow, though).
However, even with purely Dalvik apps, there are other problems. WP7 apps are limited to a very restrictive sandbox, with no access to the vast majority of the filesystem (for example). Android apps, by comparison, have a great deal of access to the device they run on, so even a very simple app may expect to have permissions that wouldn't be available on WP7. Instead, attempts to access restricted parts of the filesystem would have to be "virtually" redirected within the sandbox. This is possible in many cases, but a *lot* of work to code and has all kinds of weird edge cases.
Additionally, Android apps have a very different runtime model from WP7 apps. The biggest change is in how they handle leaving the foreground; WP7 apps are either suspended or dehydrated, while Android apps often just keep running (they can elect to suspend, but aren't required to). WP7 does support background tasks (with strict limitations, at least if you stick to the official APIs), but moving the Android app runtime into those background tasks would be quite difficult.
Finally, there's the issue of hybrid apps (apps that use native code in addition to managed runtimes like Sliverlight or Dalvik). These are much more common on Android than on WP7 (at least, than on WP7 outside this webite). Android runs on a Linux kernel, using POSIX system calls and APIs. WP7 runs on a CE kernel, using win32 system calls and APIs. There's a very loose mapping from one to the other (see the Wine project for running Win32 apps on desktop Linux) but it adds a lot of overhead and would be another layer, at least as tricky as the managed part, to the difficulty of this project.
Short version: nope, sorry.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was quite disheartening for the OP
But I liked the thorough explanation.
for curiosity, which apps are you looking for?
Thanks a million for the detailed reply. I can give up on this now otherwise would have gone crazy searching. As for the apps I wanted to use Rako which basically controls the lighting in my house and creston media which controls my theatre. These I can't live without.
Additional ones would be anonymous email and sms bomb.( to bug my friends)
as for the lighting you got me..
but for media the xbox (if you have one) companion controls my whole xbox media experience from audio (zune), movies (integrated movie player streaming from my pc)..
What about this - http://wp7mapping.interoperabilitybridges.com/Library?source=Android
Can't this be used?!
buffalosolja42 said:
but for media the xbox (if you have one) companion controls my whole xbox media experience from audio (zune), movies (integrated movie player streaming from my pc)..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Crestron controls my theater as a whole i.e lights, projector, blu ray etc. I just need to press 1 button and lights dim, screen comes down, blurry starts playing and so on. For the xbox controller its only for the xbox
buffalosolja42 said:
but for media the xbox (if you have one) companion controls my whole xbox media experience from audio (zune), movies (integrated movie player streaming from my pc)..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
drupad2drupad said:
What about this - http://wp7mapping.interoperabilitybridges.com/Library?source=Android
Can't this be used?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay im a noob and i have noooo idea what that is
drupad2drupad said:
What about this - http://wp7mapping.interoperabilitybridges.com/Library?source=Android
Can't this be used?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is just for developers who want to port their app.
jessenic said:
That is just for developers who want to port their app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly! So yes, Android app can come to WP, only if developers are hard working to port it.
However, I haven't done more than making ROMs for WM, Themes for Android, but I am currently porting 2 apps from Android to WP. Honestly, all porting is made so dead easy that a little bit of English and Bing at hand, and you are off to a great start! It's slow process but anyone can port if they want to.
VLC player - nearing completion
Facebook
Please also mention if the app on your wish list is already a windows phone 8 app. I will try to compile the most requested apps in this initial post.
After making this post, I discovered this nice table of the 100 "most popular" apps on iOS and if they are available for windows phone or windows 8:
http://www.infragistics.com/communi...-ios-android-windows-phone-amp-windows-8.aspx
I still think there are other apps worth mentioning. I'm also curious which of the apps the users on XDA would like to see the most. So feel free to post your support if you like an app that someone else has suggested.
Onlive
VLC
PayPal
Chrome
Steam
Sky Go
BBC Iplayer
There are so many it's quite hard to write them all down.
Onlive
-- never heard of this. Is it useful?
Chrome
-- I think this is unlikely to happen given the Microsoft vs Google war going on
Steam
-- interesting. Also had not heard of this. EDIT - see later post by "Good Day to Die" explaining why this seems impractical
Sky Go
BBC Iplayer
-- Both are very interesting. I think if enough people pressure the BBC then they will make an app.
There are so many it's quite hard to write them all down.
-- I think it is super useful to write these down. Trust me, this is a useful mini-project
You are not, I take it, a gamer? Not having heard of OnLive is understandable (people actually use that?) even though it would actually suit RT quite well. Not having heard of Steam is really, really weird. On the other hand, there is simply no point to having Steam on RT; you couldn't actually *run* anything. You could buy stuff and manage Friends lists and so on, sure, but you could do that from the website just as easily and with less downloading. I can *maybe* see the point of such a crippled Steam app on a phone, where website UI is difficult to use, but it should be quite usable on a tablet...
Well it's not really a Windows 8 app, but Spotify, but I take that's not an open source API?
Dropbox, but I suspect it would be closed off source also.
bigsnack said:
Well it's not really a Windows 8 app, but Spotify, but I take that's not an open source API?
Dropbox, but I suspect it would be closed off source also.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We are making a wish-list of closed source apps. That is the first step.
Well then if that is the case:
Adobe Lightroom(even if it is an express version).
Windows Media Player Classic
Flipboard
At home finances
Quicken would be at the top of my list.
I have so many to wish!
VirtualBox
Steam
OnLive
Google Chrome
Minecraft
Its not an app but an OS. Ubuntu!
Sent from my Carbonized Blaze
Someone else did his homework with the same idea.http://www.infragistics.com/communi...-ios-android-windows-phone-amp-windows-8.aspx
I'm skeptical of the point of VirtualBox; you want a VM platform on ARM? I can see the desire to dual-boot, and I can see the desire for an emulator when you *really* need to run some code from some other architecture (or are trying to run something so low-footprint that it runs OK when emulated on a relatively weak CPU), but virtualization... why? VirtualBox on RT would not be able to run x86 VMs; it's not an emulator. You think Ubuntu for ARM would virtualize nicely alongside RT? Highly doubtful.
Also, again with the Steam. Steam offers exactly zero games which are compiled for ARM. Everything else useful that the app could do, you could do from the web site. I don't see the point. If you want to ask Valve to port their games to ARM, and encourage others to do the same, *that* would make sense - some of their slightly older stuff, like TF2, would probably play fine on RT - but Steam itself would be pointless.
Please, people - if you want a list like this to be taken seriously, be serious about (and put some thought into) your requests. Minecraft makes sense, for example; it's highly popular, the hardware can handle it, and it would be viable to port it. Chrome makes sense for the same reason (I really need to take another shot at that). Ubuntu even makes sense. Lightroom might be a bit of a waste on the hardware that your typical RT device has, but it could be useful and is not impractical to port.
Don't waste your time on pointless requests, though; that will just lead to you (and the platform you're asking for support on) being completely dismissed.
bigsnack said:
Spotify,.
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Click to collapse
Apparently, the spotify website on windows RT is free. the app would cost money. Do we really want to lose the free website access?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2374692
I am using it on the web at the moment(on the desktop browser since the Metro one doesn't support music in the background). But, I was thinking that maybe the RT app would be more like their desktop app, i.e. free with ads, and not like their mobile app, radio only.
Okay, because you asked for my whole list here it is; (Some games Inc.)
Online (Cloud gaming)
VLC
PayPal
Chrome
Steam
Sky Go Sports
BBC Iplayer
Block Fortress
Worms
Bloons TD 5
Rise alarm clock
Youtube?
Google maps
GTA 3/VC
VLC Streamer
Sims
Nike + Running
Walking Dead
Now TV
Ubuntu One
Capital FM
Jelly Car 1,2&3
Real Racing
Drop box
Opera
Speedtest
D-Link Share Centre
MotoGP
Instagram
Gmail
Mail.com
Santander
Utorrent or Bittorrent
Photoshop
XDA Developers
ITunes
Devolo
Dane Reynolds said:
Okay, because you asked for my whole list here it is; (Some games Inc.)
Online (Cloud gaming)
VLC
Paypal
Chrome
BBC Iplayer
Bloons TD 5
Youtube?
VLC Streamer
Gmail
Mail.com
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gmail and Mail.com both work in the included mail app, probably 3rd party mail apps on store already.
VLC has had a very successful kickstarter for a windows 8/RT port and is currently under development. I presume this includes streaming.
Youtube I think has an official app. Otherwise, there are plenty - and I mean plenty - of 3rd party alternatives. My favourite on my x86 desktop PC is metrotube which I think is also available on ARM. Otherwise, you've got a full blown desktop based web browser on RT, not some ****ty mobile browser. It can cope with youtube fine.
OnLive I thought went bust, screw that. But if its not gone bust, then that is definitely a good suggestion.
BBC IPlayer, browser.
Bloons TD5, browser.
Paypal. Browser, but is fair enough as a metro app.
Chrome. On x86 systems if you install chrome, set as default browser, click to open the menu in the top right and there is an option to relaunch as a metro app. Microsoft have banned web browsers from the store though so there is no hope of an official chrome port. Chromium for jailbroken systems may eventually happen but whether that would include the relaunch as metro functionality or not I have no idea. But the gist of it: on x86 its been done.
Some of your others are either fair enough suggestions or you can use browser.
My personal wish list might be just as far fetched sadly, or it may not.
Cave story
Minecraft (suggested already, not happening according to mojang)
Halo combat evolved
Halo 2
Halo 3
Halo wars (actually I imagine that being playable with touch alone, as a mouse/keyboard based game it would be pretty poor though)
Halo Reach
Halo 4
Halo ODST
ok, so I love halo, don't kill me for it. Just to make some other people happy:
Call of duty
Battlefield (I loved 2 actually, didn't mind the first bad company either)
I also want microsoft to lift the restrictions on COM ports (ie, they don't allow access from an app and I think they should) and network connections to localhost (I seriously dont get what harm there is in using localhost, why block from a store app). Even if it requires adding new permissions to do so.
Just Four
Minecraft
Quicken
Waze
Endomondo
is there an official XDA forum app from windows RT?
I'm starting to get sick of the advertisements on the IE 10 modern browser and occasional crashing of IE 10 modern that this XDA forum website causes....
SixSixSevenSeven said:
Gmail and Mail.com both work in the included mail app, probably 3rd party mail apps on store already.
VLC has had a very successful kickstarter for a windows 8/RT port and is currently under development. I presume this includes streaming.
Youtube I think has an official app. Otherwise, there are plenty - and I mean plenty - of 3rd party alternatives. My favourite on my x86 desktop PC is metrotube which I think is also available on ARM. Otherwise, you've got a full blown desktop based web browser on RT, not some ****ty mobile browser. It can cope with youtube fine.
OnLive I thought went bust, screw that. But if its not gone bust, then that is definitely a good suggestion.
BBC IPlayer, browser.
Bloons TD5, browser.
Paypal. Browser, but is fair enough as a metro app.
Chrome. On x86 systems if you install chrome, set as default browser, click to open the menu in the top right and there is an option to relaunch as a metro app. Microsoft have banned web browsers from the store though so there is no hope of an official chrome port. Chromium for jailbroken systems may eventually happen but whether that would include the relaunch as metro functionality or not I have no idea. But the gist of it: on x86 its been done.
Some of your others are either fair enough suggestions or you can use browser.
My personal wish list might be just as far fetched sadly, or it may not.
Cave story
Minecraft (suggested already, not happening according to mojang)
Halo combat evolved
Halo 2
Halo 3
Halo wars (actually I imagine that being playable with touch alone, as a mouse/keyboard based game it would be pretty poor though)
Halo Reach
Halo 4
Halo ODST
ok, so I love halo, don't kill me for it. Just to make some other people happy:
Call of duty
Battlefield (I loved 2 actually, didn't mind the first bad company either)
I also want microsoft to lift the restrictions on COM ports (ie, they don't allow access from an app and I think they should) and network connections to localhost (I seriously dont get what harm there is in using localhost, why block from a store app). Even if it requires adding new permissions to do so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
do you have a link to where Mojang states that they refuse to make the game minecraft for windows RT?
Mint.com didn't want to make windows phone or RT app for ages, but enough people on the forum convinced them otherwise....
med007 said:
do you have a link to where Mojang states that they refuse to make the game minecraft for windows RT?
Mint.com didn't want to make windows phone or RT app for ages, but enough people on the forum convinced them otherwise....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no link no but when windows 8 came out notch posted a few mini rants on twitter about how windows is moving to a closed platform and how they refuse to submit minecraft to any sort of verification process (blatent lie as it has the same for android, IOS and xbla). Carl manneh then backed that up stating that mojang will not be submitting minecraft to windows 8.
Even if they did want minecraft on the Microsoft store, they couldn't use the existing minecraft desktop version, its java. The store only allows .NET, HTML5/JS and C/C++ software, no java. If you did see minecraft for windows 8 and RT it would either be a modified pocket edition (pocket edition uses a C library with many common functions and then wraps this library into android and IOS apps, same could apply to RT in theory) or a new version based from the xbox version which is C# and XNA supposedly (not been confirmed but without full developers hardware that's all 3rd parties can use, its never been confirmed if 4j studios have the developers hardware or use xna, if they do use anything else it would be C/C++ again). C# is fine on RT but there is no XNA on the windows store so new render code would be required, or they could swap to monogame but to my knowledge monogame is Windows 8 on x86 at the moment and doesn't have an arm version (might be possible to port) but is allowed on the store.