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Google has just announced that the final release of the SDK for Android 3.0 is now available for all who wish to develop for upcoming Honeycomb tablets, such as the Motorola XOOM or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. It’ll be API level 11 when you go looking for it. Here are the changes they’ve made to the SDK tools and to ADT for Eclipse:
- UI Builder improvements in the ADT Plugin:
- New Palette with categories and rendering previews. (details)
- More accurate rendering of layouts to more faithfully reflect how the layout will look on devices, including rendering status and title bars to more accurately reflect screen space actually available to applications.
- Selection-sensitive action bars to manipulate View properties.
- Zoom improvements (fit to view, persistent scale, keyboard access) (details).
- Improved support for <merge> layouts, as well as layouts with gesture overlays.
- Traceview integration for easier profiling from ADT. (details)
- Tools for using the Renderscript graphics engine: the SDK tools now compiles .rs files into Java Programming Language files and native bytecode.
More information can be had over at the Android Developers site.
Will this lead to much improved version of HC on NookColor??
@Spanki – I was just going to ask the same thing!
It will lead to true Honeycomb roms. W00t!
@Spanki & IncrediBill
Yes.
Hmm…Android 2.3.3 is API level 10 and now we learn that 3.0 is API level 11. That doesn’t really leave room for a 2.4 release, does it?
This is probably a good time to say – Thank you to all the developers who allow people like me to root and put HC on my nook color or root my Dinc, and for free no less. Your hard work is much appreciated by me!
@Dave Maybe it will be API level 10.5? Haha, just kidding.
I was wondering the same thing. But maybe Android 2.4 will just be rolled up in API level 10 since it is also Gingerbread.
Then again Android 2.3 was API level 9. You have a good point, Dave.
It is still possible that Android 2.3.3 will just be a placeholder for API Level 10 until Android 2.4 rolls out. We shall see.
Introducing changes to an already published API doesnt make sense..
If there is another gingerbread version in the works (2.3.4/2.4) then it probably wont include any changes to the API. In other words, pure bug-/performancefix release.
@Roland.se Right, but it would still be API level 10. That is what I was trying to say. ;)
I didn’t put it all that elegantly though. Oh well. :)
Another thing. Don’t they need actual ROM sources to make a useful ROM for Nook Color.
The SDK AVD ROM is a great proof of concept. But it’s not a replacement for source.
Yup, this pretty much confirms that there won’t be a 2.4 release.
Instead there will be a 3.x phone release at Google I/O. Makes much, much more sense.
Can’t wait til this is ported to the Nook Color :)
I wonder if cyanogen will try porting this to phones….??
@Roland.se, Good point! One worthwhile non-API feature could be adding dual core support (since we’re speculating).
How is the performance of the emulator now? Prefinal is pretty sluggish.
Finally, i hope it was worth the wait.
I just got it and checked the performance of the emulator. Even when I gave it a full 1GB of memory, it still runs really slow. I really can’t tell any difference from this release and the last pre-release at lease in terms of performance. Hopefully others are having better luck.