Android - Screenshot Feature FAIL

03 June 2010

Posted by malebolgia in Android

You would think taking a screenshot of an Android application would be easy? Well I did, but to my surprise the Android platform doesn't have the native ability to take screenshots like that of the iPod/iPhone's. No problem I thought, I'll just go to the Market and download an app. Unfortunately every screenshot application requires to you to root your phone for it to work!?

It boggles my mind why developers have to have a rooted phone to do this (not blaming developers). Granted this isn't a common thing people do with their android devices, but come on Google. Certainly you can create an API, or something for easier access to this. The only other option that I know of involves using a USB cable and running Android SDK tools.... :pinch:

7 Comments
0

+littleneutrino
Jun 05 2010 15:00

I can easily understand why they would have done this however, on the other hand you think that they would allow you to do this for the reason of being able to easily make a screen shot and advertise what the phone could do rather than just letting the official channels do all of the self advertisement , this annoys be greatly as there have been several times i wanted to make a screen shot and i was unable to do so because i did not have the SDK properly installed on my PC and currently I see no other reason to Root my phone.

Singh400
Jun 05 2010 17:23

Dude, isn't that hard without root:-

http://www.androidce...ts-without-root
http://mobile.jack-f..._screenshot.php
http://www.knowyourc...htc_desire.html
http://www.downloads...id-based-phone/

Yes you have to install the SDK, but it isn't that big a deal.

malebolgia
Jun 05 2010 18:03

No one mentioned that it was difficult to work with the SDK.

guruparan
Jun 05 2010 19:27

yeah...our company provides device management software for winmob, symb, blackberry, PC & Mac too..but we are stuck with Android with this issue!...its not a big deal for google to allow it, not sure why they arent letting it....

Subject Delta
Jun 05 2010 23:07

Agreed, they could have made it easier, one of the very few things that irritates me about Android. Thankfully taking screenies with ddms.bat isn't that hard

andrewbares
Jun 09 2010 01:12

That is lame, but when do you need to take screenshots? If you're a developer, yes, but then you have the SDK.

It is really odd though, why can't an application capture the screen?? Doesn't make sense. Works fine on WinMo.

mrp04
Jun 10 2010 23:44

I assume they did this so rogue applications can not take screen shots of your screen and capture information they're not supposed to have. An application could capture multiple screen shots while you're typing your password into a different application and steal your password.