Chris Pruitt, developer advocate at Google Japan
Android Market - currently hosts about 24,000 apps. And all apps must work on all Android devices (currently 26 of them).
"Replica Island" is a side-scrolling game, and the author is going to release the source tonight.
What are Android capabilities?
OpenGL ES 1.0, most support 1.1 and 2.0
Apps run via a Java shell, but can be written in C++ or Java. They use a custom "Dalvik" Java VM. Originally it was all Java, but C++ was added September last year.
Resolution is mostly HVGA (480x320), although WVGA (800x480) is gaining.
Device classes are first and second generation phones, with a few scattered game consoles and mini-laptops.
First generation device - 528Mhz CPU, Qualcomm chipset, OpenGL ES with some 1.1 extensions, HVGA screen, and Android 1.5 and 1.6
Second Generation -600 Mhz Snapdragon chipset. OpenGL ES 2.0, WVGA screens, and Android 2.1
The second generation devices (Droid and Nexus-1) take up about 20% of the market.
The system can handle resolution-independent resources so it'll pick the correct resources to match the resolution.
Input hardware: You're guaranteed a touchscreen and an accelerometer. Other things like multitouch or D-pad or keyboard are up to the developer.
You can target any version of Android, and newer versions are backward compatible with older. Currently, your best target is Android 1.5
Performance bottom line - Use VBO's, minimize VBO selection. Use floating point verts. ETC1 texture compression is most compatible. draw_texture is the fast path for 2D. GL calls from Java and C++ are almost the same speed.
