Android 1.5 Highlights

April 2009

The Android 1.5 platform introduces many new features for users and developers. The list below provides an overview of the changes.

User interface refinements
•System-wide:
◦Refinement of all core UI elements
◦Animated window transitions (off by default)
◦Accelerometer-based application rotations
•UI polish for:
◦In-call experience
◦Contacts, Call log, and Favorites
◦SMS & MMS
◦Browser
◦Gmail
◦Calendar
◦Email
◦Camera & Gallery
◦Application management
Performance improvements
•Faster Camera start-up and image capture
•Much faster acquisition of GPS location (powered by SUPL AGPS)
•Smoother page scrolling in Browser
•Speedier GMail conversation list scrolling

New features
•On-screen soft keyboard
◦Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
◦Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
◦User dictionary for custom words
•Home screen
◦Widgets
■Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search
◦Live folders
•Camera & Gallery
◦Video recording
◦Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
•Bluetooth
◦Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
◦Auto-pairing
◦Improved handsfree experience
•Browser
◦Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
◦Copy 'n paste in browser
◦Search within a page
◦User-selectable text-encoding
◦UI changes include:
■Unified Go and Search box
■Tabbed bookmarks/history/most-visited screen
•Contacts
◦Shows user picture for Favorites
◦Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
◦One-touch access to a contact card from call log event
•System
◦New Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
◦SD card filesystem auto-checking and repair
◦SIM Application Toolkit 1.0
•Google applications
◦View Google Talk friends' status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and Email applications
◦Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
◦Upload videos to Youtube
◦Upload photos on Picasa
New APIs and developer tools
•UI framework
◦Framework for easier background/UI thread interaction
◦New SlidingDrawer widget
◦Horizontal ScrollView widget
•Home Screen framework
◦APIs for creating secure home screen widgets
◦APIs for populating live folders with custom content
•Media framework
◦Raw audio recording and playback APIs
◦Interactive MIDI playback engine
◦Video recording APIs for developers (3GP format)
◦Video and photo sharing Intents
◦Media search Intent
•Input Method framework
◦Text prediction engine
◦Ability to provide downloadable IMEs to users
•Speech recognition framework
◦Support for using speech recognition libraries via Intent
•Misc API additions
◦LocationManager - Applications can get location change updates via Intent
◦WebView - Touch start/end/move/cancel DOM event support
◦SensorManager - redesigned sensor APIs
◦GLSurfaceView - convenience framework for creating OpenGL applications
◦Broadcast Intent for app update install succeeded - for smoother app upgrade experience
•Developer tools
◦Support for multiple versions of Android in a single SDK installation
◦Improved JUnit support in ADT
◦Easier application performance profiling