Installing the Android SDK for Eclipse

Here's the quickest way I know to get Eclipse up and running with the Android SDK plugin. To install each of these packages, go to Help->Install New Software, add the given URI as a package source, and install the given package. Eclipse may prompt you to restart after some installs.

Source	Package
http://download.eclipse.org/tools/gef/updates/releases/	GEF SDK
http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/updates/releases/	EMF SDK 2.5.0 (EMF + XSD)
http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/updates	Web Tools Platform / Eclipse XML Editors and Tools
https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/	Developer Tools

That should do it for you!

Droid Power Failure

Last night I left my Droid sitting on my desk, at about 80% charge. An hour later I picked it up and it wouldn't turn on. No response to pressing or holding the power button, and even replacing the battery didn't get it to turn on. I figured the battery was drained and plugged it in this morning--whereupon it booted up and showed 75% charged!

The Verizon store was disappointing. They told me I had installed too many apps and should run advanced task killer frequently. Really, guys? You think I ran out of battery and recharged to 70% in a matter of seconds this morning? No suggestions as to how to hard-reset the device. They also disavowed the autofocus bug... which neatly explains why the camera focuses in under two minutes as of this morning. I guess I should have expected the runaround to begin with.

Other than that, I love the device. It's easily the most responsive UI out of all the phones I've played with, including the iPhone. There are some software oversights--I can't move emails between folders, for example--but by and large it's been pretty solid.

Debugging the Droid on Ubuntu Karmic

$ adb devices
List of devices attached
????????????  no permissions

A few things have changed since the Android docs were written. If you want to talk to your Motorola Droid via ADB in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic, I recommend the following udev rule.

# /etc/udev/rules.d/99-android.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="22b8", SYMLINK+="android_adb", MODE="0666" GROUP="plugdev"

Restart udev, unplug and re-plug the device, and it should show up! Make sure USB debugging is enabled on your droid.

$ sudo restart udev
$ adb devices
List of devices attached
0403681F17009017  device

If that doesn't work, try restarting the adb server:

$ adb kill-server
$ nohup adb start-server