Amazon Maps API & Google Maps API

Question

I have one Android app, which has been servicing on Google Play. Its main feature is using Google Maps. I am trying to port it to Amazon App store for Android. However, it is so confusing to use Maps. I would like to use one source code and support the below devices from Amazon App store.

• All non-Amazon Android devices based on my manifest
• Kindle Fire
• Kindle Fire HD
• Kindle Fire HD 8.9

If I use Amazon Maps API, does it support this devices (All non-Amazon Android devices based on my manifest)?? If I use Google Maps API, the Kindle Fire devices can not display maps?? Or should I use both Google Maps API and Amazon Maps API to support all devices, if so, how??

If someone has an experience for this, please give me how to port Google Play app which uses Google Maps API to Amazon App Store to support those above devices at once.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Amazon does not support the Google Maps API of any version.. They use their own API which is nearly identical to the Google Maps v1 but is missing things like traffic and street view. So to answer your question, it is not possible to only build one map solution and work on both Kindle Fire devices and other non-Amazon Androids.

As for what devices the Amazon maps api supports it would be all of their Fire devices minus the first generation Fires which run a forked version of Android based on API 10.

It IS possible to build both an Amazon map and Google map in the same code base and decide at runtime which to utilize. Here is a nice little blog on some things to keep in mind when doing this.

Hope that gives you some direction!

Answer 2

Update: the Amazon Maps API has been updated to v2. Here is an article about how to migrate an app from Google Maps v2.

According to the article, the Amazon Maps API offers interface parity with version 2 of the Google Maps API and most classes and method calls in your Google Maps app work the same on Amazon devices. I will give it a try and see today.