Well, I guess “ChewSoft Does”. Under our Christmas tree this year is the release of Symbolism 1.0 into the Android Market.

For the most part, it was a very straightforward development effort. The idea was to take the iPhone version and port it over as close as possible. Of course, theOpenFeint stuff was yanked out. We also chose to leave out the ‘Timed Game’ mode. Not sure exactly how many people played it, so if you do, please let us know and we’ll sneak it in one of the next few releases.

Now for the techie stuff…As most people know, the iPhone’s SDK supports the Objective-C language and Android supports Java. So from a code perspective, it was virtual rewrite. We were, however, able to save a lot of time not having to redo any of the graphical work (which amount to almost 25% of development on average). The primary sticking point in development was simulating and testing for the various devices and profiles. Unlike the iPhone, Google Android support various resolutions (HVGA/320×480, WVGA/480×800, QVGA/240×320, etc) and multiple densities. The idea for application developers is that they should create separate graphical artifacts that target each resolution. Being a 1.0 version of Symbolism, we chose to stick to 320×480. The bigger resolutions (which are supported) will be stretched a little bit for the bigger displays. Once we sell a few thousand, we’ll dedicate some resources to some of the larger resolutions to make them look more crisp. The final sticky point in development was the memory limitations of Android. Android limits applications to 16MB of heap space. Wow. Just wow. Keeping it short (and I could go on and on), let me just say that this is where the iPhone has a HUGE competitive advantage and imho, could ultimately be Android’s downfall.

All in all, we learned a lot. Will it be profitable for ChewSoft? We’ll keep you posted. In the short term, we’ve tabbed Gabbing Mad as next for the Android platform (because I believe it will be a much easier port). Stay tuned!!