Which Android platform to choose when installing the Android SDK?

Question

After installing the Android SDK, I noticed that I need to choose the platform, i.e. Android 1.3 all the way upto 4.1 individually.

My question is, does this mean if I create an app, I have to create it on each and every platform individually?

I am a total noobie to Android development...

Answer 1

It's basically recommended to choose lowest API you plan to support in your application (unless you know you got reasons to have it set differently). For example if your app is for Honeycomb and newer versions only, then select SDK 3.0 to get access to all the features newly introduced in HC which you may want to use. But if your application shall run also on older devices with older versions of Android like 2.0.1 (or even 1.6 if you really need) set this to lowest API desired. So, now that rule is sufficient for you and lets you ensure you accidentally won't use any API method not supported on all platforms you target to which would lead your application to crash.

If not sure what API you want I suggest go for 2.x and simply ignore any older Android versions as it is basically pointless, according to platform version breakdown statistics published by Google.

I recommend you read this SDK article on how to define minSdk and targetSdk elements to match your requirements.

Answer 2

No. You can specify a minimumsdkversion for your app in your Android Manifest, so that it will support all the platforms from this API Level up to the newest platform.

See here for more information.

Edit:Of course you can't use some newer API functions in older SDKs, without the support lib, or some third party libraries(e.g the actionbar, fragments, expandable notifications etc.)

Answer 3

A simple answer is no.

When you are developing an application you have the provision to specify which is the minimum platform that you are developing for. The newer SDk will have more features which might not be available in old ones so care must be taken to see that your app is available for a specific platform.

I would suggest that you bookmark the developer.android.com and stakoverflow.com websites, they will be very handy :)

Answer 4

Take a look here Basically it means that your app is meant to be used with this android version (but you can support higher or lower version too). I strongly encourage you to read the documentation to understand better how the all thing works.