Today Xojo released another Android preview. It is kind of sat that after many years they are very exited and celebrating a “partially working” debugger that will not have hot-swap code. Lets not talk about the single code base part. 
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I watched it too. Very sad indeed. It just shows they are already miles behind the competition and after wasting many years of precious resources (they really couldn’t spare), they aren’t even close to a release. On top of that, when (ever) released, no serious programmer will even consider it, as it will take another half a decade before coming somewhat usable if it follows the path of the other ‘extra’ platforms they made (iOS, Web).
And that is the other sad part. The things they were once very good at (desktop x-plat) has been lost in the process. But in Xojo’s defense, we the users, are partly to blame. We wanted mobile so badly and trusted Xojo could do it. Reality is, they were by no means ready to tackle such a task. A strong Xojo management would’ve said: ‘Sorry guys, no can do. But we will be the very best in what we can do: desktop cross platform. THIS we may be able to handle’. Now, they are (at best) mediocre in the desktop department too.
Sorry, I don’t get it. What are the attributes to say that the Xojo Android framework is not “miles behind” the competition. What exactly would you like to see? I just want to understand!
Their focus is that almost all mobile controls are available for iOS and Android. Also large parts of the Xojo framework. So what are things that you are missing?
Hot Code Swapping and debugging on a real device just to name a few. Camera, Bluetooth, Multi-touch support, Sensors, Network, Beacons, Firebase, Wifi, SSH, OpenGL, NFC … I find no indications this will be possible in Xojo out of the box. Essential if one wants to make Android apps. Probably will again have to come from (payed) plugins.
Paul has already mentioned that debugging works on real devices. Multitouch should be possible with PointerEvent or do you mean another thing?
MobileMotion and MobileLocation are two ways to access Sensors. What do you mean with Network, URLConnection? MobileImagePicker is the Camera you looking for.
Cool. Not with Hot Code Swapping however.
Could be their multitouch. I would have to see e.g. a two or tree finger example to be sure.
Extremely limited. How about Ambient temperature, Magnetic field sensor, Heart Rate, Light, …?
No. Page Not Found — Xojo documentation is the closest I can find to what I mean. However, i see no mention of ServerSockets for example. So again, only very basic support.
No. I want to directly access the camera in my apps, not just ‘take a picture’. I want access to the stream, be able to manipulate it real time to do Barcode decoding for example.
Already mentioned but, Firebase is huge and a must! Drawers, custom controls shareable across various platforms, inApp Payments, AdMob, inline java code (or kotlin maybe), a way to use native code from open source projects, google maps, webView with acces to the DOM, execute javascript and listens to events, widgets, Notifications Builder, Sip / Voip, stackless coroutines, etc. I use most of this in B4A for what I consider basic apps, no way I could recreate them in Xojo.
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Looks like I was TOO OPTIMISTIC about xojo. They just confirmed in TOF, Android will NOT even have RegEx and XMLDocument in the first releases. And looks like the classes listed in the blog post are the only ones available.
No clipboard, No PDF, etc 
Hot code swapping is cool but the overwhelming majority of popular languages do not support this and nobody is claiming they are dead.
I wish people would stop beating on Xojo so much. Give them a break.
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from their own things Regex, XML, Plugins
never mind adopting some of the more modern things in Android (since version 5 is 7years old now)
My disappointment with Yet Another Video is - its JUST another video.
It looks a LOT like last years (and the year before and … you get the picture)
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Lots of promises and lack of quality have been the problem for a long while now. Adding Android is very likely to thin Xojo’s time spent per target substantially. That’s in addition to Web 2.0 still having lots of issues.
I’m using PHP now due to Web 1.0 and 2.0 bugginess and lack of love.
Fix the bugs and and the beatings will subside.
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Gluon supports not only code swapping but using the same code and Project
Beating xojo comes from coming soon for years and so endless paying for years. What xojo promised I got with changing to java and gluon
Give them a break? I think most of us have given them multiple breaks, and they have wasted every one of them. They barely have enough resources to run the company (actually they don’t have enough)… as evidenced by the current state of the products, the amount of bugs, the less than stellar offering for iOS (sorry its a joke)… and the fact that they are WAY WAY late to the Android party…
The party may soon be ended while Google possibly is developing the android successor
From my own blog notes: Android first announced at XDC in October 2016 with the promise that it would be done Q4 2017.
It’s one thing to be late by a quarter or two but if we see Android in 2021 that’s 4 years late. iOS isn’t fully fleshed out. Web 2 isn’t fully fleshed out. It’s been a while since I’ve used Raspberry Pi but it didn’t feel very fleshed out at the time. Linux still has some issues. I find it highly unlikely that Android will be fully fleshed out either.
So yeah, I think Xojo developers have legit complaints. We all want the company/product to do better but I’m not sure it’s possible given their current configuration, workload and targets to care for. As a long time user and supporter I just don’t think we (the collective we on this forum) are not their target audience. Not sure who is, but that’s not my problem.
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OMG. This.
Paul has confirmed Android will launch without key components. Android 2021 Summer Preview - RegEx/Xml missing - #6 by Paul_Lefebvre - General - Xojo Programming Forum
Do you remember the Palm Pilot ?