Wednesday 3 November 2010

Android, how easy is it to deploy or install your own app to your phone

The answer is very easy

So you have spent a few hours developing a new android app (ive been using the eclipse IDE) and you have been testing using the adb emulator, but you want to see something on your very own android hardware (ive got a HTC Desire).

These are the steps ive followed:
  1. Build your .apk package.
  2. Connect your phone to your pc in disk drive mode (this enables you to mount it on your pc).
  3. Browse to your removable disk (this shows up as drive G: on my machine).
  4. Copy the .apk file that was generated by the build to your phone and remember where you copied it to.
  5. Disconnect the phone.
  6. On the phone use a file manager app like 'ES File Explorer' or 'ASTRO File Manager' and browse to the .apk file you copied on in step 4.
  7. Open the .apk file and select install.
It really is that easy, none of that iphone certificate nonsense, or limited use to tolerate, lets just do it :-)

Setting the date on Android emulator adb

To set the date on your android emulator use the following command from the terminal

adb shell date -s 20101023.130155

This sets the date to be Oct 23rd 13:01:55 2010
easy