Android 2.0.1, Release 1

API Level: 6

Android 2.0.1 is a minor platform release deployable to Android-powered handsets starting in December 2009. This release includes minor API changes, bug fixes and framework behavioral changes. For information on changes and fixes, see the Framework API section.

For developers, the Android 2.0.1 platform is available as a downloadable component for the Android SDK. The downloadable platform includes a fully compliant Android library and system image, as well as a set of emulator skins, sample applications, and more. The downloadable platform includes no external libraries.

To get started developing or testing against the Android 2.0.1 platform, use the Android SDK and AVD Manager tool to download the platform into your Android 1.6 or later SDK.

Platform Highlights

For a list of new user features and platform highlights, see the Android 2.0 Platform Highlights document.

Built-in Applications

The system image included in the downloadable platform provides 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)

New with 2.0.1 The Dev Tools app now includes a "Sync Tester" application to provide quick and easy testing of third-party sync adapters.

Locales

The system image included in the downloadable platform 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 are available in the Android 2.0.1 system image are listed below (with language_country/region locale descriptor).

  • Chinese, PRC (zh_CN)
  • Chinese, Taiwan (zh_TW)
  • Czech (cs_CZ)
  • Dutch, Netherlands (nl_NL)
  • Dutch, Belgium (nl_BE)
  • English, US (en_US)
  • English, Britain (en_GB)
  • English, Canada (en_CA)
  • English, Australia (en_AU)
  • English, New Zealand (en_NZ)
  • English, Singapore(en_SG)
  • French, France (fr_FR)
  • French, Belgium (fr_BE)
  • French, Canada (fr_CA)
  • French, Switzerland (fr_CH)
  • German, Germany (de_DE)
  • German, Austria (de_AT)
  • German, Switzerland (de_CH)
  • German, Liechtenstein (de_LI)
  • Italian, Italy (it_IT)
  • Italian, Switzerland (it_CH)
  • Japanese (ja_JP)
  • Korean (ko_KR)
  • Polish (pl_PL)
  • Russian (ru_RU)
  • Spanish (es_ES)
    		•

    Localized UI strings match the locales that are accessible through Settings.

    Emulator Skins

    The downloadable platform includes a set of emulator skins that you can use for modeling your application in different screen sizes and resolutions. The emulator skins are:

    • QVGA (240x320, low density, small screen)
    • WQVGA (240x400, low density, normal screen)
    • FWQVGA (240x432, low density, normal screen)
    • HVGA (320x480, medium density, normal screen)
    • WVGA800 (480x800, high density, normal screen)
    • WVGA854 (480x854 high density, normal screen)

    For more information about how to develop an application that displays and functions properly on all Android-powered devices, see Supporting Multiple Screens.

    Developer Features

    The sections below provide information about new developer features offered by the downloadable Android 2.0 platform component.

    Ant Support

    • Debug- and release-mode application signing. Release-mode signing includes integrated support for zipalign optimization. For more information, see Signing Your Applications.
    • Adds new Ant build system with support for Emma instrumentation projects (code coverage).

    Framework API

    The sections below provide information about changes made to the application framework API provided by the Android 2.0.1 platform. Note, however, that Android 2.0.1 is a minor release to Android 2.0, so for more information about the changes made to in Android 2.0, please refer to the Android 2.0 version notes.

    API level

    The Android 2.0.1 platform delivers an updated version of the framework API. The Android 2.0.1 API is assigned an integer identifier — 6 — 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.

    To use APIs introduced in Android 2.0.1 in your application, you need to set the proper value, "6", in the attributes of the <uses-sdk> element in your application's manifest.

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

    API changes summary

    The following is a summary of changes to the framework APIs.

    Behavior changes

    The following is a summary of changes that affect the behavior of some framework APIs but do not add or remove API functionality.

    Bluetooth

    Changes to the values returned by ACTION_REQUEST_ENABLE and ACTION_REQUEST_DISCOVERABLE:

    Contacts

    The ACTION_INSERT Intent now returns RESULT_CANCELED in cases where the contact was not persisted (for example, if the save was trimmed to a no-op).

    Bug fixes

    The following is a summary of bug fixes that affect some framework APIs.

    Resources

    The framework now correctly selects application resources in project folders that use the API Level qualifier. For example, drawable-v4/ is a folder of drawable resources for API Level 4 (or higher) devices. This version matching did not work properly and has been fixed.

    Contacts

    The ACTION_INSERT Intent now returns the appropriate kind of URI when the request is made using the (now deprecated) Contacts APIs.

    Other Framework fixes

    API differences report

    For a detailed view of API changes in Android 2.0.1 (API Level 6), as compared to API Level 5, see the API Differences Report. There are very few API changes in API Level 6, so you might also be interested in reviewing the API differences between 4 and 5.