Quote:
Originally Posted by =X=
The real power of android is the Java foundation and the Android API that has been built on it.
With java you have the truest scene of write once run everywhere.
I don't know what SONY used to create the 505/600, but I don't think it was on Java. I'm pretty sure it was a complete rewrite.
=X=
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The Android platform supports some amount of JNI more recently so that developers on
that other platform can port code more easily to Android. So you'd need to use Java for the UI, but you can (and should) still run a lot of the frameworks natively rather than through a VM.
Plus, while I'm not 100% sure, I don't believe OEMs are limited by being forced to use Java to target the platform. Maybe HTC can answer that question since they heavily customize things. At some level, it has to go to native to get performance/battery benefits, and an OEM can always plug in there where ISVs normally aren't allowed.
At that point, you don't have a complete re-write, as you can bring your C-based libraries between the Linux base you had before and the Android Linux base. If the code is even remotely well written, it wouldn't take a lot of time to do that, but it would take some time updating the UI.