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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-23T19:44:00+00:00

I’m starting to broad my developer skills also to the Android development. I installed

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I’m starting to broad my developer skills also to the Android development.

I installed all the tools and configurations and every thing seem great, As a default settings I install the 3.2 SDK, but there is not too much docs on that one, mode of what is out there is on the 2.x SDKs.

Is it like IOS, does android have a good backward computability? Can I stay with the 3.x and count on it (with the features that are in the 2.x SDKs) to work on 2.x phones? What are the common version in the Android devices this days? I have lots of newbie develop questions like that, as i want to start from a good starting point and there are lots of materials and tutorials over the web that are not up to date.

Also, does any one know about a good site for this kind of Q&A?

Thank you,
Erez

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As of July 5th the version with the largest market share (59.4%) is 2.2 (API Level 8) as shown here
    http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html so Consequently I would recommend using that as a starting point unless you are solely focusing on the new honeycomb tablets (<1% market share).

    As for backward compatibility, android is completely backward compatible for the most part. Unless of course you use a new feature that is only available starting with a certain API level. Google’s Android market is good about only allowing apps that will run on a certain API being visible to that phones user. This is enforced by the API level as recorded in the manifest file that is created with every Android app and set by the developer.

    To help you with the API level, the SDK docs show what API a feature/object started with in the upper left hand corner. You can also view the specific changes in each platform and it’s corresponding API level at http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.

    As for a good website to get started I would recommend the developer site at developer.android.com and this website of course. Also the book Android Wireless Application Development by Shane Conder and Lauren Darcey (2 ed) Is very good. (I am not connected with the book just currently reading it). Make sure you get the latest edition.

    Hope this helps,
    George

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