The Kindle Fire as a generic Android testing platform

Solar2D Android
#1

I got my KF today, a day early (thanks Amazon) from the $139 referb fire sale yesterday.

Overall its not too bad.

I got it as an Android test environment and so far I’m not too thrilled with it and it may be a Corona SDK issue.
Here’s the scenario: I uploaded the .apk file that I sent to Google Play to my website in a hidden folder and after making sure the KF could install apps outside of the app stores, I browsed to the URL and downloaded and installed Turkeys Revenge (which is up in all three Major Android stores: Play, Amazon and Nook).

The first think I noticed was in that in the Carousel the icon was really blurry from being blown up too far. But the bigger problem came when I launched it. I got a message, that said, this app needs to be built for Amazon/Fire or some such. In other words my generic android APK file won’t run on the KF unless I do a specific KF build.

I then uploaded the Amazon version (built for the Fire) and other than the icon looking awful, and custom fonts not working, it ran fine.

So how can I test my straight up android apps? In this particular case, there is a difference: The amazon and nook versions don’t have ads and I detect for it in code and behave as I need to. But if I wanna appear to be a free Play based app, the KF will make that testing kinda hard.

Thoughts?
Rob [import]uid: 19626 topic_id: 24128 reply_id: 324128[/import]

#2

This is my understanding of the KF.

A normal Android build will not work on the KF. The main reason is many things need to be disabled for the KF. It is not a phone and Amazon wants those permissions removed. Your app can also not use things the KF does not have (accelerometer, camera, etc).

I did ask Carlos if a KF build will run on normal Androids and he said it would. Which makes sense as it is basically a stripped down Android build. If you more or less do not use extra hardware for your app you can build for KF and use that one build across Amazon and Google Play.

As for the icon, that is just how the KF displays it because it is not a legitimate install from Amazon. From what I read it displays correctly when downloaded and installed from Amazon. [import]uid: 56820 topic_id: 24128 reply_id: 97396[/import]