An Android in Every Home - Beginning Android Games - page 3

ï?® Version 2.3 (Gingerbread) : Added a new concurrent garbage collector to the
Dalvik VM.
ï?® Version 3.0 (Honeycomb) : Created a tablet version of Android. Introduced in
early 2011, Honeycomb contained more significant API changes than any
other single Android version released to date. By version 3.1, Honeycomb
added extensive support for splitting up and managing a large, high-
resolution tablet screen. It added more PC-like features, such as USB host
support and support for USB peripherals, including keyboards, mice, and
joysticks. The only problem with this release was that it was only targeted at
tablets. The small-screen/smartphone version of Android was stuck with 2.3.
ï?® Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich [ICS]) : Merged Honeycomb (3.1) and
Gingerbread (2.3) into a common set of features that works well on both
tablets and phones.
ï?® Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) : Improved the way the UI is composited, and
rendering in general. The effort is known as “Project Butter�; the first device
to feature Jelly Bean was Google's own Nexus 7 tablet.
ICS is a huge boost for end users, adding a number of improvements to the Android UI and
built-in applications such as the browser, email clients, and photo services. Among other
things for developers, ICS merges in Honeycomb UI APIs that bring large-screen features to
phones. ICS also merges in Honeycomb's USB periphery support, which gives manufacturers
the option of supporting keyboards and joysticks. As for new APIs, ICS adds a few, such
as the Social API, which provides a unified store for contacts, profile data, status updates, and
photos. Fortunately for Android game developers, ICS at its core maintains good backward
compatibility, ensuring that a properly constructed game will remain well compatible with older
versions like Cupcake and Eclair.
Note We are both often asked which new features new versions of Android bring to the table for
games. The answer often surprises people: effectively no new game-specific features outside of
the native development kit (NDK) have been added to Android since version 2.1. Since that version,
Android has included everything you need to build just about any kind of game you want. Most new
features are added to the UI API, so just focus on 2.1 and you'll be good to go.
Fragmentation
The great flexibility of Android comes at a price: companies that opt to develop their own UIs
have to play catch-up with the fast pace at which new versions of Android are released. This can
lead to handsets no more than a few months old becoming outdated, as carriers and handset
manufacturers refuse to create updates that incorporate the improvements of new Android
versions. A result of this process is the big bogeyman called fragmentation .
Fragmentation has many faces. To the end user, it means being unable to install and use certain
applications and features due to being stuck with an old Android version. For developers, it
means that some care has to be taken when creating applications that are meant to work on