Android

Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) API Level 11 Table_01: Android 3.0 Features

New User Features 1. New UI – holographic UI newly designed for large screen displays with content focused interaction, the UI is backward compatible, applications designed for earlier versions can be used with new UI. 2. Refined multitasking 3. Rich notification, no more popups 4. System bar at the bottom of the screen for system status, notification and it accomodates navigation buttons, as like in Google Chrome. 5. Customizable homescreen (5 homescreens) and dynamic widgets for 3D experience 6. Action bar for application control for all applications 7. Redesigned keyboard for larger screen, keys are reshaped and repositioned and new keys added such as Tab key. button in system bar to switch between text/voice input mode 8. Improvement to text selection, copy and paste; very close to what we do in computer. 9. Buil in support for Media/Picture Transfer Protocol – you can instantly sync media files through USB cable. 10. Connect full keyboard over USB or Bluetooth 11. Improved Wi-Fi connectivity 12. New support for Bluetooth tethering – you can connect more types of devices 13. Improved browser for efficient browsing and better browsing experience using the large screen – some of the new features are: - multiple tabbed browsing instead of windows, - incognito mode for anonymous browsing. - single unified view for Bookmarks and History. - multi-touch support to JavaScript and plugins - improved zoom and viewport model, overflow scrolling, support for fixed positioning 14. Redesigned camera application for larger screen - quick access to exposure, focus, flash, zoom, etc. - built-in support for time- lapse video recording - gallery application for full screen mode viewing and easy access to thumbnails 15. Redesigned contacts applications features for larger screen - new two-pane UI for contacts applications - improved formatting for international phone numbers based on home country - contact information view in card like format for easy reading and editing 16. Redesigned Email appliations - two-pane UI for viewing and organizing mails - sync mail attachments for later viewing - track emails using email widgets in the homescreen

. New Developer Features 1. New UI Framework – to fragment and combine activities in different ways to create richer and more interactive applications 2. Redesigned UI Widgets for larger screen and new holographic UI theme - developers can quickly add new types of content to relevant applications and can interact with users in new ways - new types of widgets included such as 3D stack, search box, date/time picker, number picker, calendar, popup menu 3. Action Bar at the top of the screen can be customized by developers according to application 4. A new builder class to create notifications that include large and small icons, title, a priority flag, and any properties already available in previous versions 5. Developers can use mulitiselect, clipboard and drag and drop features to offer users more enjoyable gaming experience 6. Performance improvement to 2D and 3D graphics - new animation framework - new hardware accelerated OpenGL renderer to improve the performance of 2D graphics based applications - Renderscript 3D graphics engine for accelerated graphics operations and create high performance 3D effects in applications. 7. Support for multicore processor architectures – support symmetric mulitprocessing in multicore environments, even an application designed for single core environment will enjoy the performance boost. 8. HTTP Live streaming – media framwork supports most of the HTTP Live streaming specification. 9. Pluggable DRM framework – for applications to manage protected content, Android 3.0 offers unified API for simplified management of protected contents. 10. Built-in support for MTP/PTP over USB 11. API support for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP profiles For Enterprises Device administration applications can include new types of policies, such as policies for encrypted storage, password expiration, password history, and requirement of complex characters for passwords.

Android 3.1 additional features and improvements to UI and  standard applications in Android 3.0

Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) API Level: 12 Release: 10 May 2011 Table_02: Android 3.1 New Features and Improvements

New Features 1. Refined UI - Launcher animation optimized for faster, smoother transition to/from app list - Adjustments in color, positioning and text - Audible feedback for improved accessibility - Customizable touch-hold interval - Navigation to/from five home screens made easy. Touching the home button in system bar will return you to most frequently used home screen. - Improved view of internal storage used by apps 2. Support for more varieties of input devices such as keyboards, mouse, trackballs, game controllers and accessories such as digital cameras musical instrument, kiosks and card readers. - Any type of external keyboards, mouse and trackballs can be connected - Most of the PC joysticks, game controllers and game pads can be connected except for some proprietary controllers - More than one device can be attached simultaneously via USB and/or Blutooth HID - No configuration or drivers required - Support for USB accessories as host to launch related applications, if application not available the accessories can give the URL to  download the application. - Users can interact with application to control the accessories. 3. Recent Apps list is expandable to include larger number of apps. The list will have all the apps in use and recently used apps. 4. Customizable Home screen - Re-sizable home screen widgets. widgets can be expanded in both vertically and horizontally. - Updated home screen widget for Email app gives quick access to emails 5. New high performance Wi-Fi lock added for uninterrupted connectivity even when the device screen is off. This will be useful for streaming long duration music, video and voice services. - HTTP proxy for each individual Wi-Fi access point can be configured. This will be used by the browser when communicating with the networks. Other Apps also may use this. - Configuration is made easy by touch-hold of the access point in the setting - Back up and restore the user defined IP and proxy setting - Support for Preferred Network Offload (PNO), which works in the background and conserves battery power in case where Wi-Fi connectivity needed  for longer time. Improvements to Standard Applications 6. Improved Browser app – new features added and UI improved - Quick Controls UI is extended and redesigned. Users can use it to view thumbnails of open tabs, to close the active tabs, access overflow menu for instant access to settings and many other. - Supports CSS 3D, animations, and CSS fixed positioning to all sites. - Supports embedded playback of HTML5 video content - Save the webpage locally for offline viewing with all styling and imaging - Improved auto login UI let users quickly sign in to Google sites and manage access when multiple users sharing the same device - Support for plugins that use hardware accelerated rendering - Page Zoom performance improved 7. Gallery apps improved to support Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP). - Users can connect external cameras over USB and import pictures to Gallery with one touch - The imported pictures are copied to local storages and it will show the balance space available. 8. Calender grids are made larger for better readability and accurate targeting - Controls in data picker are redesigned - Calender list controls can be hidden to create larger viewing area for grids 9. Contacts app allows full text search making it quicker to locate contacts and the results are shown from all the fields stored in the contact. 10. Email app improved - When replying or forwarding HTML message the improved Email app sends both plain text and HTML bodies as multi-part mime message. - Folder prefixes for IMAP accounts are made easier to define and manage - Prefetches emails from server only when the device is connected to a Wi-Fi access point. This is done to conserve battery power and minimize data usage - Improved home screen widget gives quick access to emails and users can cycle through email labels with the touch of the Email icon at the top of the widget 11. Improved Enterprise support - Administrators can use the configurable HTTP proxy for each Wi-Fi access point - Allows encrypted storage card device policy with emulated storage cards and encrypted primary storage

Compatible Devices: Android Honeycomb Tablets, Google TV

Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) API Level 9 Table_03: Android 2.3 Features

. User Features: 1. New user interface has a simple and attractive theme in black background, which is designed to give a vivid look while being power efficient too. Menu and settings are changed for ease of navigation. 2. Redesigned soft keyboard is optimized for quicker and accurate text input and editing. And the word being edited and dictionary suggestion is vivid and easy to read. 3. Multi touch key cording to input number and symbols without changing input mode 4. Selection of word and copy/paste made easy. 5. Improved power management through application control. 6. Provide user awareness on power consumption. Users can view how the battery is used and which consume more. 7. Internet calling – supports SIP calls to other users with SIP account 8. Support Near-field communication (NFC) – high frequency high speech data transfer within a short range (10 cm). This will be useful feature in m commerce. 9. A new download manager facility that supports easy storage and retrieval of downloads 10. Support for multiple cameras .

. For Developers 1. Concurrent garbage collector to minimize application pauses and support increased responsiveness game like applications. 2. Touch and keyboard events handled better which minimizes the CPU utilization and Improve responsiveness, this feature is beneficial for 3D games and CPU intensive applications. 3. Use updated third party video drivers for faster 3D graphic performance 4. Native input and sensor events 5. New sensors including gyroscope is added for improved 3D motion processing 6. Provide Open API for audio controls and effects from native code. 7. Interface to manage graphic context. 8. Native access to activity lifecycle and window management. 9. Native access to assets and storage 10. Android NDk provide robust native development environment. 11. Near Field Communication 12. SIP based internet calling 13. New audio effects API to create rich audio environment by adding reverb, equalization, headphone virtualization, and bass boost 14. Built in support for video formats VP8, WebM, and audio formats AAC, AMR-WB 15. Support multiple camera 16. Support for extra large screen .

Android 2.3 Devices Google Nexus S, HTC Cha Cha, HTC Salsa, Samsung Galaxy S II (Galaxy S2), LG Optimus 3D, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia pro, Sony Ericsson Xperia mini, Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, Motorola Droid Bionic, HTC Pyramid (2.3.2) .

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Android 2.3.3 API Level 10 Table_04: Android 2.3.3 Additional Features

. Additional Features: 1. Improved and extended support for NFC – this allows applications to interact with more types of tags and access them in new ways. The new APIs have included wider range of tag technologies and allow limited peer to peer communication. Also it has a feature for developers to request Android Market to not to show their applications to users if the device does not support NFC. In Android 2.3 when an application is called by a user and if the device does not support NFC it returns a null object. 2. Support for Bluetooth non-secure socket connections – this allows applications to communicate even with devices that is not having UI for authentication. 3. New bitmap region decoder added for applications to clip part of an image and features. 4. Unified interface for media – to retrieve frame and metadata from input media file. 5. New fields for specifying AMR-WB and ACC formats. 6. New constants added for speech recognition API – this supports developers to show in their application a different view for voice search results.