Nearly 7 months ago, we publicly announced that the OpenTok API would extend its reach to native mobile application developers by publishing the OpenTok iOS SDK. In the time since, we have tightened the performance of the SDK runtime for iOS devices and spent a good deal of time learning about how best to deliver video to the mobile platform. While iOS commands a large portion of the mobile app market, it is intuitive that we should build similar SDKs for other popular platforms outside of the browser. It is a pleasure to announce that we are developing the OpenTok Android SDK, to allow native Android developers to bring live video chat to their apps.
The Android OS opens a wide set of devices and system API versions to with which to work. While we do not expect to target the entire Android device landscape, most mobile devices built in the past two years that run Android OS should be able to support video chat in a native app. As we learn the baseline of devices and OS versions that developers wish to target, we will work to ensure a quality experience with the OpenTok API for the broadest set of mobile devices possible.
A demo application using the OpenTok Android SDK is available on GitHub, which developers can download and run on their Android devices today. The standalone SDK is hosted separately. We’re collecting data on which devices work, so go ahead and give it a spin, then let us know how it went. Finally, tell us about your app! We are interested in what kind of application you’re working on, devices you’re interested in getting video chat to work with, and Android OS API versions those devices are able to support.