|
For me, Android is a step forward. Couple of years ago, when we started first version BOOX software, we had to develop almost everything from scratch, IPC, CMS(Content Manager System), GUI library(Based on Qt, but tuned for eInk), eBook Readers, Network management, application level power management. Of course, we were able to tune these apps to run pretty well on low-end hardware. Android, is much more complex(the source tarball is around 2.4GB) and consumes more computation resource(Virtual Machine Byte Code vs. Native Code). But with Android, we don't need to start everything from scratch and we may just focus on applications and internet service. On the other hand, end users are also able to install lot of excellent apps.
There're some concern before we migrate to Android. Android is slower than Linux and Qt GUI. It's right, but we have more powerful hardware that we had before. Power management of Android is bad or not suitable for eReader. Not really, it depends on how you customize and optimize the Android system. The network management of Android is nicer than the one of Linux solution. It's more easy to develop apps for android too, there are lot of development resource for android. So there is no reason we stick to Linux.
|