One thing is great about getting a new computer toy like the Droid is there is a whole universe of new things to bitch about!
I’m sure if anyone from Google, Motorola or Verizon are listening they must hate that sentence.
I’ve been in their shoes too and when I am, I remind myself that if they didn’t use it they wouldn’t criticize it. I tried to explain that to an editor at TechCrunch the other day, without much luck.
The good news is we love your product.
And the bad news is we love your product. 
Anyway, I downloaded a free game called Snake. I have no idea what it is, but its icon looked interesting. Launched it and was presented with a screen that says: Snake (newline) Press Up To Play. That’s like All Your Base etc etc. I’m sure someday soon that will make perfect sense. But today it makes absolutely no sense.
I suspect it has something to do with the keyboard.
Which reminds me, I never use the keyboard. The onscreen keyboard is much more useful.
November 9, 2009 at 8:55 am
Slide open, use D-Pad.
November 9, 2009 at 9:59 am
Sorry — but what’s the “D-Pad?”
November 9, 2009 at 10:16 am
“Directional pad”… otherwise known as the little gizmo next to the qwerty keyboard.
November 9, 2009 at 10:21 am
So this is an example of an application that *requires* the use of the D-pad on the hardware keyboard? It sounds like the type of game that is based on changing directions quickly with a four-way controller. That’s fine. But to me this raises the issue of writing software for a platform where the hardware is unknown. What happens when a new Android 2.0-based phone with no hardware keyboard is released? Will developers have to consider all the hardware permutations that may exist, or will they simply accept that their program may not run on some future device with different features?
November 9, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Yet another PC vs Mac similarity. iPhone apps have to work on a limited set of hardware configurations while android apps will potentially have to support a diverse set.
If the snake game is the one from the developers kit, then it was written when there was only one android hardware configuration.
Does android need a definition of potential hardware configurations that apps should be written to support?
November 9, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Snake is a very early sample code application/game that predates even the 1.0 SDK. Someone just took it from the 1.0 SDK and published it on Market.
There are now ways in Android to detect what kind of navigation the device has (d-pad, trackball, none), so that the app can react accordingly. You can also make your app require a particular navigation method. Device without it will not see the app on Market.
Of course this sample is so old it doesn’t deal with this at all.
November 9, 2009 at 10:21 am
Directional pad, that little square to the right of the keyboard?
November 11, 2009 at 4:27 pm
I’m assuming snake doesn’t work with Droid yet. Dpad doesn’t work either.