Since launching as a standalone company as Cyanogen Inc. back in 2013, the open source community surrounding Android has changed dramatically and while Cyanogen OS is indeed different to downloading and installing CyanogenMod onto your device, there are phones launching with Cyanogen in parts of the world these days. The aftermarket Android-based OS has taken off, and as the company grows, it seems that they’re keen to keep in touch with the community that helped make the platform so popular. Cyanogen is making it easier for developers to add APIs or leverage existing ones with the launch of the Platform SDK, which they’ve spoken about before.
Cyanogen’s own blog post perhaps sums up the new Platform SDK best by describing it as “an open source SDK that allows developers to either use existing APIs newly presented in CyanogenMod’s own framework, or contribute their own APIs to be leveraged by any other application.” The blog post dated May 20th cites the recent TreeHacks hackathon at Stanford University as inspiration for the launch of the Platform SDK. This new SDK will allow developers to tap into existing APIs to further extend CyanogenMod as well as introduce new APIs for others to work with. In the example given, the blog post goes through a Quick Tile that turns your smartphone into a bike computer, this was done using the existing Quick Settings Tile API which is one of the first available to devs in the Platform SDK.
Right now, there’s not much to write home about, but this Platform SDK is more about the future, and handing back some of the control of the platform’s direction back to the community. CyanogenMod has had a long history of features being added by other developers from either outside of the project or from inspiration outside of CM. Perhaps the launch of this new Platform SDK will help CyanogenMod find its next killer feature, and further help Cyanogen OS differentiate itself from Google’s Android. Those interested can find all the relevant info and a code example at the source link below.