Application Developers Love Geo Awareness in Android 2.0 and Above
Apr 1, 2010 Android App Development
From Android API level 5 onwards, the Geo-location libraries have been getting better and better. The best API revision till date in respect to Geo-location however has been the API Level 7 which is available for Android 2.1 handheld / device. Nexus One was the first Geo-Aware device, which was running Android 2.0 with API Level 5.
One of the key reasons why Geo-awareness was must in Android devices is basically because of its competitor like iPhone were already there in the market and application developers were actively using the feature to build apps for the platform.
Earlier version like Android 1.5 & Android 1.6, API Level 3 & API Level 4 respectively was shipped with Google Gears installed in Chrome for Android Browsers, which was used for Geo-Location services. However, these OS versions were very particular with Geo enabled services API and can only be used in Chrome browser, not the whole operating system wide. So, Android 1.5 & 1.6 were partially Geo-Aware.
Android 2.0 and later has full fledged HTML 5 Chrome, which means now Chrome has W3C Geo Location API engine. This would allow this feature be available through the entire operating system and can be used by any native App too. This actually makes your Android phone a complete Geo Aware device.
Geo-awareness of Android phones would actually be a great help in Android application development and app developers are sure to leverage it in creating new and advanced applications. We have seen how the geo-aware feature of iPhone has been utilized by application developers and we are sure there would be no exception for Android.
Tags: Android 2.0, Android 2.1, android developers, Android Geo Location API Engine, API Level 5, API Level 7, Chrome for Android, Geo Aware, Geo Awareness, HTML 5 Chrome, Nexus One