A Common Platform API for Android

Cross-platform frameworks for mobile devices promise to facilitate the porting effort of applications between different smartphones. Our approach is to cross-compile Android applications to other platforms such as iOS or Windows Phone 7. Doing so requires to refactor the Android source code base in a platform-dependent and platform-independent part separated by a Common Platform API. This paper discusses the cross-compiling of Java-based Android applications and the design and implementation of the Common Platform API.