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I've been looking through a few of the apps today (was actually looking to see how many use ACRA) but noticed that a lot of them use the NDK. I've been developing apps for quite some time and have yet to find a need for the NDK and as per the Android Developer site you shouldn't really use it unless you need to:
In general, you should only use the NDK if it is essential to your app—never because you simply prefer to program in C/C++.
So this has got me to thinking... Am I missing something? I mean here are just a few of the apps using the NDK where I can't really see a need for it:
I guess my thinking is perhaps they are using the same code on other platforms, libraries written in C and used on iOS, Android & other platforms, but I'm just not convinced that this is the reason. Are there any other things that these apps are likely to be using the NDK for? Other things I guess could be: Licensing, privacy/security (move complicated reverse engineering), Device IDs, Gaming engines etc.
Anyhow, the question is really, do you have any ideas as to why so many apps are using the NDK?
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The Native Development Kit (NDK) is a set of tools that allows you to use C and C++ code with Android, and provides platform libraries you can use to manage native activities and access physical device components, such as sensors and touch input.
But even if we know C or C++, how would we implement it in our app? So this is where we require NDK to integrate the native-code languages to make it run on the app. Let's see some more advantages of using NDK: It provides a way to embed the equivalent native libraries in the apk.
You really should use SDK, unless you have a good reason to use NDK. Good reasons may vary, but for example, you could use NDK: If you want to use OpenGL ES 2.0 for Android 2.1 (Eclair), it is only avaiable through NDK.
Android provides Native Development Kit (NDK) to support native development in C/C++, besides the Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) which supports Java. [TODO] more. NDK is a complex and advanced topics.
Not sure if this question is proper for StackOveflow, but as a developer using NDK I can give you two reasons from my perspective:
very large code base in C++, which is used also for versions on iPhones and Winrt, and also Windows CE/Desktop. It was developer for years, fixed, tested by lots of users.
its harder for hackers to learn what your code is doing, and to break it. But not impossible.
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