ArcGIS for Android

Sunday, 1 January, 2012

Well anfter the initial fuss that ESRI had actually released the ArcGIS for Android (AA) app, I realised that it wasn’t compiled for ARMv6 deviecs, which includes my cheap and cheerful San Fran. So I put it to the back of my mind. I happened to be browsing the Market this week and realised that the latest update had provided support in this area and so I took the plunge and installed it. And in ESRI fashion, its not a lightweight app…. 17.83 Mb my phone reports which is by some margin the biggest app I have installed. And for those with not too much memory its a real space hog so just as well they provide support for moving it to SD.

Probably best to see what ESRI have to say on the topic…. and if you read this it’s pretty clear that AA is an ArcGIS Online viewer, and a pretty big and bloated one at that. Yes it allows you to zoom in and out, search using a gazeteer and add and remove layers. Its “strength” is the tie in to ArcGIS Online… if you use it. It also allows you to add bespoke layers from ArcGIS Server as well. What it doesn’t do is anything related to data collection, working with feature classes, editing or any other mobile GIS type activities. For that you’ll need (a license for) ArcPad. In fact it’s no where near as usable as Google Maps which has a very simple, but elegant, interface, that works fast and does what it says on the tin. For example, I wanted to send my brother a location to meet up… fire up Google Maps, identify your location, long press and then select “Share”. Messaging (amongst others) others you to txt a shortened URL. Nice. That said, ArcGIS isn’t competing with Google: it’s in a different marketplace.

So, AA (obviously!) is an ArcGIS tie in and supports reasonably tightly the ArcGIS product line (and don’t forget ArcGIS for iPhone). And perhaps this reflects the strength of ArcGIS more generally…. (on Windows) it may not be the fastest, most reliable or most user-friendly interface, but you can almost guarantee that it’ll be able to anything you could possibly want done (perhaps with a little coding). Hence the expansion to Android and iPhone. In this sense the application itself is relatively unimportant and that the key aspect is actually the SDK. The application is the exemplar, but it is corporates demanding iOS and Android platforms to roll their own apps out on to. As long as the SDK has the functionality built, who cares how big and bloated it is as long as it supports the full workflow. So AA is not the one to watch, but the apps that follow-on from it… it’ll be interesting if a whole new industry grows up around this in the same way it did for ArcGIS on Windows (e.g. XTools Pro, ET GeoWizard, GME, Jenness).

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