MicroEJ announced the availability of the Android Compatibility Kit, connecting global electronic things manufacturers to a fast-growing ecosystem of Android Studio and associated developers.
This new release consolidates MicroEJ’s positioning as the “tiny sibling of Android” for small and constrained smart devices. By enabling the same software to run on either MicroEJ or Android execution environment, manufacturers can easily switch from a powerful processor to a smaller one (from ex.: Arm Cortex-A to Arm Cortex-M) to dramatically reduce energy consumption.
MicroEJ Android Compatibility Kit brings many great benefits to smart devices manufacturers:
Android Compatibility and Android Studio Support: MICROEJ VEE shares the same technology principles as Android. It now also supports the development of applications with Android Studio and integrates with the Gradle build system.
Accelerated Development using Virtual Devices: MicroEJ enables development on virtual devices to parallelize hardware and software development and speed up specification validation. Android Studio can launch MicroEJ Virtual Devices just as Android Virtual Devices.
Greater Energy Efficiency: MicroEJ Android Compatibility Kit enables two processors to coexist and distribute the same tasks between a very powerful processor powered by Android and a low-power processor powered by MicroEJ to dramatically reduce energy consumption.
Leveraging Hardware Innovation by removing Software-Hardware Inter-lock: By using standard software containers, application code built with MicroEJ is portable on the best hardware, independently from RTOS/OS combinations. It accelerates hardware evaluations and fosters the development of derivative products thanks to software API reuse.
Large Developer Ecosystem: The large ecosystem of Java/Kotlin developers can now use popular tools such as IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, and Gradle to build MicroEJ applications, leveraging low-power features embedded at the heart of MICROEJ VEE for highly optimized resources usage.
Leveraging Hardware IP’s for vector graphics: MICROEJ VEE eases the usage of Graphics Processing Units (GPU), enabling a similar look and feel to smartphone apps. MicroVG provides support for Android Vector Drawables and SVG formats for impeccable UI/UX on any type of screen and leverages any vector GPU when necessary.
The MicroEJ Android Compatibility Kit is especially valuable in battery-operated industries such as smartwatches and thermostats, allowing the development of cost-optimized and energy-efficient products. MicroEJ is a lightweight option that enables the expansion of product lines with the same user experience from low-end to premium devices.
Android Compatibility Kit is currently successfully used with lead customers for the production of mass-market electronic products.