On 12 November, 2007, we made available the first early look at the Android SDK to give developers an opportunity to explore Android and build applications for the Android Developer Challenge. That was followed by the "M5" early look build.
Since then, we've been hard at work with our partners preparing the first device for launch and finalizing the APIs and platform. The developer feedback we received via the "early look" SDKs has been extremely valuable in that process. This Roadmap outlines our plans for the coming months, and lets you know what to expect as we near device availability.
This is the top-level Roadmap. Individual components of Android (such as the Dalvik virtual machine, the Android Developer Tools, and so on) will have their own roadmaps, once we complete the source code release. Those roadmaps will be linked to this page, as they become available.
To orient yourself, consult this brief timeline. Read on for details on these milestones.
Before we dive into details, here is a quick note on how we name SDKs.
We've adopted the following naming convention for Android SDKs: "Android <Platform> SDK, release <Release>"
The downloadable file names for the SDKs will have this naming convention: "android-sdk-<Host-OS>-<Platform>_r<Release>.zip"
The "<Platform>" refers to the version of the Android platform with which the SDK is compatible. For instance, an SDK that can be used to build applications that will run on Android 1.0 is considered to be an "Android 1.0 SDK". However, since we do expect to release bug fixes and enhancements for the various tools included in the SDK (such as the emulator, Eclipse plugin, DDMS, and so on) we need to distinguish between releases of the SDK that can be used to build for the same Android platform. That's what we will use the "<Release>" for.
For example, the first SDK that is compatible with Android 1.0 is named "Android 1.0 SDK, release 1", and will have file names such as "android-sdk-windows-1.0_r1.zip". In the future, after we release a hypothetical Android 2.0 platform version, you might see an SDK named "Android 2.0 SDK, release 3", which would refer to the third released SDK compatible with Android 2.0.
The SDK consists of two general pieces: a version of the Android platform itself (that runs in the emulator), and the accompanying developer tools that surround it. This means that when we ship SDK releases, all releases within a given series (such as all the SDKs for Android 1.0) will consist of essentially the same platform image, but with different, updated tools.
In August, we released Android 0.9 SDK, beta. The Android platform image was not quite 1.0-final (which is why we identified it as 0.9), and the tools were not yet final (which is why we referred to it as beta.)
For the SDK that includes the Android 1.0 platform and updated tools, we've dropped the beta labeling and released "Android 1.0 SDK, release 1". Applications developed on this SDK version will be compatible with devices that run the Android 1.0 platform.
The first Android-powered device, the T-Mobile G1, was announced on 23 September, 2008. To learn more about the T-Mobile G1, see the T-Mobile G1 site.
Other partners will be releasing Android-powered devices in the future. We will update this space with more specific information about each device release, as it becomes available.
We are currently in the process of preparing for the release of the source code. This includes a few key tasks:
This work is already under way, but since Android contains some 8 million lines of code, it's a lengthy process. We expect this process to conclude (and source code to be released) in Q4 of 2008.
When Android was announced on 5 November, 2007, Google also announced a $10 million Android Developer Challenge, split into two separate $5 million events. The first Android Developer Challenge ran from January 2008 through August 2008, and was intended to give developers an opportunity to explore their ideas using the early look SDK and build prototype applications -- to "get in on the ground floor." The second Challenge will give developers a chance to build polished applications once hardware is available.
We'll be making some interesting announcements regarding ADC II soon, in Q3 or Q4.