Rally cry: ARMv6 and RAD now! Join in.

Solar2D Android
#1

Rally cry:

Please support ARMv6 again!
And as you are at it, add also more RAD stuff so we can develop apps quickly for the masses!
Can we afford to be without 80% of the Android market by not supporting ARMv6 ? Add your voice by responding to this thread!

Since ANSCA dropped ARMv6 support plenty of new ARMv6 phones hit the market. ARMv6 phones remain the bulk of the market. In the ANSCA mind-frame these users do not matter though as ANSCA aims for the cutting edge users with ARMv7 devices.
Corona evidently does have a place in the market for developing quickly apps with eye-candy - and also for not-so-demanding 2D games. Clearly developers cannot afford to disregard 80% of the Android market of ARMv6 phones and offer apps only to high-end users. In my not so humble opinion the lack of support for ARMv6 amounts to suicide.

I do like Corona. To me its potentially a sort of Delphi or Visual Basic with eye-candy and some additional gaming capabilities.

However in the imagination of the ANSCA people Corona seems to be something else currently: A tool to produce high-end games for ARMv7 devices. I am afraid that market-niche is already occupied by Unity3D. Besides developers who need cutting-edge speed mostly go for low-level languages and not lua.

To illustrate the sorry state of things:

Currently Corona developers cannot develop an Angry-Birds-like game with simple graphics which runs on most Android phones. No Next-Angry-Bird for you Corona developers because 80% of potential users cannot even try your game.

One can also not write a simple in-house App for your company staff because half of your staff will not be able to use it as they have “only” an ARMv6 phone.

And also one would not build some heavy 3D graphics with Corona game because there are other tools on the market for this.

Anyway ,the ANSCA given argument that Corona with ARMv6 support is too slow does not fly. I have tested Mac OS X Corona 319 version which supports ARMv6 and the speed is just fine on standard devices with 600Mhz. Corona 319 can easily produce an Angry-Bird-like game.

And BTW, where is the market that ANSCA is hoping for by concentrating on ARMv7 ??? Has anyone seen a graphically-heavy Corona app which demands ARMv7? I doubt very strongly that the hoped-for market of heavy graphics games exists for Corona.

Evidence - If one looks through the list of recently produced Corona apps one cannot see apps/games which would need ARMv7 support, ARMv6 speeds would be fine for almost all of these apps:
http://developer.anscamobile.com/showcase/
IMVHO, Ansca has to make some strategic decision here and look with a sober mind what developers are currently using Corona for. The evidence is clear: They use it as a RAD for apps and for non-demanding 2D games.

So please ANSCA guys, add back ARMv6 and provide RAD tools so we can produce rapidly apps and games with eye-candy. BTW: I also need more forms, buttons etc. I am absolutely certain that a Visual-Basic/Delphi like RAD tool for Android and IPhone would be a huge success with tons of users. Every larger corp on the planet will need such tool eventually. Corona has all ingredients for it.

The market for RAD tools is very large and can be sliced into student, standard, pro, enterprise editions. If Corona supports all iPhone and Android devices on the market then there are tons of money to be made. Just go for it.

Doing a RAD doesnt mean you have to drop the gaming/physics etc. Its a nice to have. Besides apps with gaming like features are more fun to use. The physics and gaming is something beyond forms and buttons to differentiate Corona apps from the rest of the market.

So lets make Corona something better: The best smartphone RAD with full iPhone/Android coverage, with eye-candy and 2D gaming engine.

Dear fellow Corona developers: Please add your ideas to this thread, so it stays on top of the ANSCA agenda. If we dont act then chances are that Corona will slowly die and a great chance to build something better will be lost.

Cheers

Geejay

Some recent threads that deal with lack of ARMv6 support:
http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2011/09/20/corona-android-22-htc-gratia-problem
http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2011/09/14/strongphoto-camera-trouble-corona-319-mediashowmediacamera-oncompletestrong
http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2011/09/05/apk-do-not-get-installed-my-device
http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2011/06/09/devices-corona-dont-work-armv6
http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2011/05/24/im-new-corona-so-more-noob-problem [import]uid: 77956 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 315715[/import]

#2

@Geejay,
+1

I agree with you on that, however I’d also like to share something with you. I had purchased a Huwei Ideos 8500 (or something) (cheap, but priced at $199) about a year ago. I ran on it, code that I was working on (at the time) and had a video demonstrating how it worked with both the TelstraTouchTab (a 7" wide Android device also $199 and from Huwei) and the Ideos which was a small 240x320 kind of android, but ran 2.2 The code ran perfectly fine on them, but when I used physics, it would CRAWL!!

Fast Forward, I created some more games Office Blues, Escape the Factory, Bruno The Bandit, RetroBallz, these work perfectly fine on the iOS, Since the new Armv7 thingie, I coud not test, I had someone test Retroballz on two android ARMv7 devices, the game CRAWLED, and I was *NOT* even using Physics.

The point of what I am suggesting is that, yes majority of the devices in the market are ARMv6, many clients want to purchase a cheaper ARMv6 device for deployment, they can buy 4/5 Androids in the price of 1 iPhone. So for a corporate kind of in-house (non game) we *could* have a build that works on ARMv6 devices.

Otherwise even if these were supported by Ansca, they would be incapable of running anything on it.

cheers,

?:slight_smile: [import]uid: 3826 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 58084[/import]

#3

JayantV,

one would hope that Corona has a more predictable performance on Android.

The performance of ARMv6 compatible builts on Corona 319 on Mac OS X was satisfactory for our needs.

IMVHO, ANSCA hasnt really figured out for which type of developers they try to cater for. So far they are neither addressing the gaming power developers nor the general app developers adequately.

Cheers

Geejay
[import]uid: 77956 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 58177[/import]

#4

Geejay,
I think it would be wrong to put the blame entirely on Ansca, yes while they have blurred the difference that they had in the form of Corona SDK and Corona SDK GE (Game Edition). They have in a previous blog explained the reasons for not supporting Android and also the fact that the issues are partially because of the BUGS in Android OS than in CoronaSDK.

Yes, I agree that for the Android an earlier version was good enough for Business-like/non-gaming apps, but then we (developers) demand more and expect all the same things.

It is a touch nut to crack, glad I am not in their shoes while making this decision. What do you say Carlos?

cheers,

?:slight_smile: [import]uid: 3826 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 58178[/import]

#5

JayantV,

If one browses through the Corona apps
http://developer.anscamobile.com/showcase/Browse_All

one notices that there are very few Android Apps.

Conclusion: Corona has problems with Android - and that is in the biggest OS for mobile phones!

IMNSHO, ANSCA is working on some wrong assumption, namely that the world consists of godzillions of 2D game developers who all want to launch the next Angry Bird game with some spectacular graphics on ARMv7 and become insanely rich. Wrong

For starters those guys cannot become insanely rich because Corona doesnt run on the majority of devices which happen to have an ARMv6 processor

And more importantly, the boring truth is that the world does not consist of godzillions of game developers who will make ANSCA rich but of godzillions of in-house developers who work in some boring company and produce very boring specialized apps in Visual Basic, Delphi, C for some limited audience, e.g. some corp employees and their thousand clients. They need some tools to quickly build an app which is functional and looks nice. And that App should run on as many phones as possible. Period.

I think therefore that for ANSCAs and its clients financial well-being it would be great if Corona would work on ARMv6 Android devices because that is the bulk of the market. And if it works on ARMv6 it automagically also works on ARMv7. Throw in some optimized physics engine, some additional bells and whistles, eye-candy and ready is the iPhone/Android RAD.

Cheers

Geejay
[import]uid: 77956 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 58325[/import]

#6

I personally spent hours both with our developers, with Google, and we spent more than six months communicating with our developers that we would be switching to Android 2.2 ARMv7 devices.

And both from a business perspective and after getting the majority of our users to agree to our changes several months ago, we decided to make the change.

I doubt we will revert to supporting ARM6 devices.

Carlos.
[import]uid: 24 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 58386[/import]

#7

Carlos,

Underlying is the fundamental question who your target group of clients/developers is? Currently it is very blurry which type of developers Corona targets.

If you target 2D game developers who need Android performance and you cannot optimize your ARMv6 compiler then of course you need to go for ARMv7. That market of developers is however very small and also the question arise whether Corona is the ideal tool for such type of programmers as they cannot tweak for performance at low-level.

If you however target the broad group of programmers who need a RAD with iPhone/Android support then ARMv6 support is obligatory. For these type of developers graphics/physics performance does not matter very much.

IMVHO ANSCA makes a huge mistake ignoring this very large group of programmers. Also Lua is very suited for rapid application development, it is theoretically an ideal fit. If ANSCA waits too long then another development platform will fill this market gap soon.

Cheers

Geejay
[import]uid: 77956 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 58533[/import]

#8

I see that there haven’t been very many responses to this post. I suspect that most of the programmers here would have the cutting edge devices, but that most of the population does not.

So I will join the band wagon and beg for support of ARMv6 devices.

I hate to think of all the long hours spent creating amazing apps that will never be downloaded by Droid users :frowning: [import]uid: 93625 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 63470[/import]

#9

Sorry. ARMv7 it is.

C. [import]uid: 24 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 63472[/import]

#10

Fortunately I saw this thread today. I almost bought a developer PRO license of Corona…I have developed a small application and could see I can’t run on my Motorola Quench mobile, an ARMv6. Now I will start to look for another SDK who support more mobiles…Maybe I can come back to Corona in 1 or 2 years…since at least 80% of the mobiles in Brazil uses ARMv6…
Thanks for the post.

ANSCA people, Is there something new on this thread? [import]uid: 93792 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 81721[/import]

#11

Nothing new. [import]uid: 52491 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83084[/import]

#12

Peach Pellen, Thanks for the reply. Can you or other people post the download link of the last Corona build who support ARMv6? I know it is not supported anymore, but if my application works ok…I can go with it.

Many thanks [import]uid: 93792 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83127[/import]

#13

The last supported armv6 build is 706 (maybe 705?). The Android side of Corona has not undergone too many changes since then, so you won’t be missing out on much yet.
[import]uid: 36054 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83139[/import]

#14

@blaster build 706 is a fairly recent release,isn’t it? I think ARM v6 support was stopped way before that! [import]uid: 64174 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83147[/import]

#15

@Satheesh I double checked. 707 is the first build that is armv7 only. [import]uid: 36054 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83150[/import]

#16

Something is really wrong…because I have 2011.704 and everything I compile does not run on ARMv6…

and when I try the link on Ansca page : Download -> Stable release archive … it shows :
Sorry! This page can’t be accessed.

Missing Forum Post?
[import]uid: 93792 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83232[/import]

#17

707 was the first build not supporting arm6 on ios
319 was the last build supporting arm6 on android [import]uid: 13632 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83235[/import]

#18

Thanks for clarification…Can I have a link to 319?
[import]uid: 93792 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83242[/import]

#19

Here is a link to the last build to support ARMv6;
https://developer.anscamobile.com/downloads/coronasdk-2011268

Understand that we are unable to provide any assistance with old builds like this under any circumstances and we do not guarantee that they will work well, or at all.

(That goes for anyone looking to download the old build.)

Peach [import]uid: 52491 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 83270[/import]

#20

+1 here.
Some simple games for Android should not require a “new” or “model” processor. [import]uid: 9190 topic_id: 15715 reply_id: 86815[/import]