Android 1.6 Version Notes

Date: September 2009
API Level: 4

This document provides version notes for the Android 1.6 system image included in the SDK.

• Overview
• New Features
• Built-in Applications
• Locales
• API Changes

Overview

The Android 1.6 system delivered in the SDK (as library and system image) is the development counterpart to the Android 1.6 production system image, deployable to Android-powered handsets starting September 2009. The system is fully compliant and includes no external libraries.

The Android 1.6 system delivers an updated version of the framework API. As with previous versions, the Android 1.6 API is assigned an integer identifier — 4 — that is stored in the system itself. This identifier, called the "API Level", allows the system to correctly determine whether an application is compatible with the system, prior to installing the application.

For more information about how to use API Level, see the API Levels document.

New Features

For a list of new system features, see the Android 1.6 Platform Highlights document.

Built-in Applications

The system image includes these built-in applications:

• Alarm Clock
• Browser
• Calculator
• Camcorder
• Camera
• Contacts
• Custom Locale (developer app)
• Dev Tools (developer app)
• Dialer
• Email
• Gallery
• Gestures Builder
• IME for Japanese text input
• Messaging
• Music
• Settings
• Spare Parts (developer app)

Locales

The system image provides a variety of built-in locales. In some cases, region-specific strings are available for the locales. In other cases, a default version of the language is used. The languages that will be available in the Android 1.6 system image are listed below (with language_country/region locale descriptor).

Localized UI strings match the locales that are displayable in the emulator, accessible through the device Settings application.

API Changes

Overview

• Search framework
• Applications can now expose relevant content to users as search suggestions in the Quick Search Box, a new device-wide search capability that is accessible from the home screen. To support this, the search framework adds new attributes to the searchable metadata file. For complete information, see the SearchManager documentation.
• Accessibility framework
• New android.accessibility package that includes classes for capturing accessibility events and forwarding them to an AccessibilityService handler.
• New AccessibilityService package that lets your application track user events and provide visual, audible, or haptic feedback to the user.
• Gestures
• New gesture API for creating, recognizing, loading, and saving gestures.
• Text-to-speech
• New package android.speech.tts provides classes for synthesizing speech from text, for immediate playback or to create a sound file.
• Permissions
• New permissions for CHANGE_WIFI_MULTICAST_STATE, INSTALL_LOCATION_PROVIDER, READ_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS, WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, and WRITE_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS.
• Graphics
• Classes in android.graphics now support scaling for different screen densities.
• Telephony
• New SmsManager and other classes for sending and receiving SMS messages.
• Utilities
• New DisplayMetrics fields for determining the density of the current device screen.
• Application-defined support for various screen densities

Applications can now use a new element in their manifest files, <supports- screen> to indicate to the specific screen resolutions/densities that they are designed to support. When the application is installed on a device whose screen is not explicitly supported by the application, the system runs the application in Compatibility Mode, where possible.

API Change Details

For a detailed view of API changes in this platform (API Level 4), see the API Differences Report.