After getting an android phone about a month ago, I finally got around to writing a workable pagefeed sync app. This app can handle share intents from any app (I use NewsRob mostly), and save that link to pagefeed on next sync.

It also downloads the links (not the content, this is a lightweight app) so you can delete links from the app and have them deleted from the webapp as well.

You can download the apk here (I haven’t signed up for the market yet). The source is also up on github.

Android as a platform

Overall, I found android frustrating to learn when dealing with some of the newer and less-documented parts (like SyncAdapters and how they interact with ContentProviders, for example), but overall I’m finding it to be a very well-designed system that is easy to write for.

For comparison (because I’ve written an iPhone app or two), this app could not exist on the iPhone because interaction with other apps (via intents) is crucial, as is background operation (which has only just arrived in OS4). It would also be a royal pain in the ass to obtain, store and validate user credentials - all of which android makes general and reusable (I am happily reusing the google-provided authenticators).

Oh yeah, and it’s written in scala! I seem to have an aversion to platform-specified languages, having used python for my biggest iPhone app. Of course, that meant that I had to void my warranty and only run on jailbroken iPhones. Android doesn’t care how you write your app, and that’s the way it should be.