Google Releases Android 3.0 'Honeycomb' SDK Preview to Developers

Google on Wednesday released a preview of the Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" SDK to allow developers to start testing their apps on tablets.

The SDK includes non-final APIs, but is intended to help developers familiarize themselves with the new UI patterns, APIs, and capabilities that will be included in Android 3.0, Xavier Ducrohet, Android SDK tech lead, said in a blog post.

"Besides the user-facing features it offers, Android 3.0 is also specifically designed to give developers the tools and capabilities they need to create great applications for tablets and similar devices, together with the flexibility to adapt existing apps to the new UI while maintaining compatibility with earlier platform versions and other form-factors," Ducrohet wrote.

Highlights of the SDK, according to Ducrohet, include: a UI framework for creating great apps for larger screen devices; high-performance 2D and 3D graphics; support for multicore processor architectures; rich multimedia; new types of connectivity; and enhancements for enterprise.

"Developers can use a new UI components, new themes, richer widgets and notifications, drag and drop, and other new features to create rich and engaging apps for users on larger screen devices," he wrote.

A property-based animation framework allows for visual effects within the app, while a new 3D graphics engine called Renderscript allows for rich 3D scenes, Ducrohet said. Multimedia features include HTTP Live streaming support, a pluggable DRM framework, and media file transfer through MTP/PTP. Three are also APIs for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP for audio streaming and headset control.

Also today, Google released updates to its SDK tools(r9), NDK (r5b), and ADT Plugin for Eclipse (9.0.0), which include: improved drag-and-drop in the editor, with better support for included layouts; in-editor preview of objects animated with the new animation framework; visualization of UI based on any version of the platform, independent of project target; and improved rendering, with better support for custom views.

Apps built with the Android 3.0 Platform Preview cannot be published on the Android Market. A final SDK will be released "in the weeks ahead," Google said.

Google's Mike Cleron demonstrated Honeycomb on an unnamed tablet at this year's CES.

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