In the Code Pollution series, I'll be writing about topics where a coding anti-pattern may work tactically for an individual application, but strategically will be bad for Android as a whole, just as pollution may benefit one firm while harming many others.

Many readers have, at one point in time or another, had a Windows PC that got overloaded with "cruft" and took forever and a day to boot up. Or, even if it would boot normally, it would be slow as a dog for the first minute or two after the desktop showed up.

While it would be fun and entertaining to bash Windows for this, in reality, it was probably third party applications causing a chunk of the problem. Lots of programs think that they just have to do something when the PC starts up, and too many of them bring the boot process to a halt.

The good news is that, for most people, Android is plenty stable enough not to require constant reboots. The bad news is that Android devices may still need to be rebooted from time to time, to process firmware upgrades, to recover from a dead battery, and the like.

One of the things the core Android team feared was too many applications asking to do something at boot time, via the BOOT_COMPLETED broadcast Intent, and causing the boot process to become horribly slow. That is why you need the REQUEST_BOOT_COMPLETED permission to receive BOOT_COMPLETED broadcasts -- the theory being that users who have had problems with slow boots might be less inclined to install other programs that demand boot-time access.

Still, though, it is up to us as developers to try to make the boot process as quick and painless as possible. Here are some ways you can help:

Do not request BOOT_COMPLETED broadcasts unnecessarily. For example, some developers may think it would be cool to steal three or four seconds of processing time at boot to do some sort of initialization, rather than have to deal with that work when their app is started. Tactically, this will improve responsiveness of that one application...at the cost of harming all applications on a reboot.
Do whatever you need to do quickly. If BOOT_COMPLETED is unavoidable, try to get in and out in few dozen milliseconds, not a few seconds.
Consider whether you can wait a bit. Many times, apps do not need to start up right at boot time, but rather sometime after a reboot. Unfortunately, there is no built-in way to ask for a "early, but not right away" broadcast...unless you set one up yourself. Consider whether you could use AlarmManager to do a one-shot alarm to fire your real boot-time code a minute or two after the boot is over. You only lose a minute, and it clears out the rest of the boot processing, and perhaps some initial user actions, before your code needs to join the fray.

QR Code for WalkyTalky:



QR Code for Intersection Explorer:

Today I received a brand new iPhone 4. Life was joyful. However it gave me some frustrating moments before I could use it for real. Here is the true story what happened when I got my iPhone 4.

I had prepared the migration by backing up my contacts from my HTC Hero. The HTC had no way to export contacts to a SIM card, but only to SD card. Strangely enough it was possible to import contacts from a SIM card. Anyway I did not consider this to be a big problem, since exporting to the SD card should work fine.The contacts was saved as a VCF file. This was easily imported by double-clicking on the file. When this was done, all the google contacts was on my Mac Book. After I started and initialized the iPhone, it was connected via a USB cable to the Mac Book. Consequently iTunes was started with a wizard. One of the steps was the sync setup. By default all contacts was to be synced. Perfect! This was exactly what I wanted. A couple of more steps and I pressed the “Sync”-button.

After a short while something really odd happened. A warning message saying that no synchronization of contacts was not possible, since the phone was not connected. What! The phone was connected. Not good! I discovered a button labeled “Restore”. The help text explained that this should be used when in trouble. I felt like being in trouble and hit the restore button. The process was really fast, but enough time to get some tea. Then the same procedure once more. Still the same problem. Next try; search the Internet. I found out that I was not alone with this problem. I tried out all of the different solutions explained in the forum. Do not know how many times I cleared the sync settings, restarted the phone, re-booted the computer and all other kinds of tricks. The Apple support pages did not contain any other suggestions than found in the forum. Now I was really frustrated. I should not be that complicated to get your contacts into your new phone. Time to get a break. Get your brain to think in a different way. Reset the brain. Get some food.

Several hours later it was time to try a new approach. I googled “Sync iPhone Google”. I found an article called “Google Sync: Set Up Your Apple Device for Google Sync“. It seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. The article explained how to use add an account in the iPhone to synchronize mail, contacts and calendar. In fact it was a Microsoft Exchange account. It took me less than 5 minutes to have mail, contacts and the calendar in sync.

The final solution was much simpler than copying contacts via the computer. The intent was to only transfer the contacts and then set up a mail account on the phone. Now I get an all-in-one solution,  with mail, contacts and calendar synchronization. Now my life is joyful again.

Each year since its inception, I have attended the Öredev developer conference. What makes it special is that it is a combined conference, with not only Java. This year it is especially important for me, since I can learn about both Android and iPhone development.

I will attend this year. Will you?

Do not forget to register at the Öredev site.