page.title=Android 1.6 Version Notes

@jd:body

<p>
<em>Date:</em> September 2009<br />
<em>API Level:</em>&nbsp;<strong>4</strong></p>


<p>This document provides version notes for the Android 1.6 system image included in the SDK. </p>

<ul>
<li><a href="#overview">Overview</a>
<li><a href="#features">New Features</a>
<li><a href="#apps">Built-in Applications</a>
<li><a href="#locs">Locales</a>
<li><a href="#api-changes">API Changes</a>
</ul>

<h2 id="overview">Overview</h2>

<p>The Android 1.6 system delivered in the SDK (as library and system image) is
the development counterpart to the Android 1.6 production system image,
deployable to Android-powered handsets starting September 2009. The system is fully
compliant and includes no external libraries.</p>

<p>The Android 1.6 system delivers an updated version of the framework
API. As with previous versions, the Android 1.6 API 
is assigned an integer identifier &mdash; <strong>4</strong> &mdash; 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. </p>

<p>For more information about how to use API Level, see the <a
href="{@docRoot}guide/developing/">API Levels</a> document. </p>

<h2 id="features">New Features</h2>

<p>For a list of new system features, see the <a
href="http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-1.6-highlights.html">Android 1.6 Platform
Highlights</a> document.</p>

<h2 id="apps">Built-in Applications</h2>

<p>The system image includes these built-in applications:</p>
	<ul>
	<li>Alarm Clock</li>
	<li>Browser</li>
	<li>Calculator</li>
	<li>Camcorder</li>
	<li>Camera</li>
	<li>Contacts</li>
	<li>Custom Locale (developer app)</li>
	<li>Dev Tools (developer app)</li>
	<li>Dialer</li>
	<li>Email</li>
	<li>Gallery</li>
	<li>Gestures Builder</li>
	<li>IME for Japanese text input</li>
	<li>Messaging</li>
	<li>Music</li>
	<li>Settings</li>
	<li>Spare Parts (developer app)</li>
	</ul>

<h2 id="locs">Locales</h2>

<p>The system image 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 will be 
available in the Android 1.6 system image are listed below (with 
<em>language</em>_<em>country/region</em> locale descriptor).</p>

<table style="border:0;">
<tr>
<td style="border:0">
<ul style="margin-bottom:0;">
<li>Arabic, Egypt (ar_EG)</li>
<li>Arabic, Israel (ar_IL)</li>
<li>Bulgarian, Bulgaria (bg_BG)</li>
<li>Chinese, PRC (zh_CN)</li>
<li>Chinese, Taiwan (zh_TW)</li>
<li>Croatian, Croatia (hr_HR)</li>
<li>Czech, Czech Republic (cs_CZ)</li>
<li>Danish, Denmark (da_DK)</li>
<li>Dutch, Netherlands (nl_NL)</li>
<li>Dutch, Belgium (nl_BE)</li>
<li>English, US (en_US)</li>
<li>English, Britain (en_GB)</li>
<li>English, Canada (en_CA)</li>
<li>English, Australia (en_AU)</li>
<li>English, India (en_IN)</li>
<li>English, Ireland (en_IE)</li>
<li>English, New Zealand (en_NZ)</li>
<li>English, Singapore (en_SG)</li>
<li>English, South Africa (en_ZA)</li>
<li>Finnish, Finland (fi_FI)</li>
<li>French, France (fr_FR)</li>
<li>French, Belgium (fr_BE)</li>
<li>French, Canada (fr_CA)</li>
<li>French, Switzerland (fr_CH)</li>
<li>German, Germany (de_DE)</li>
<li>German, Austria (de_AT)</li>
<li>German, Switzerland (de_CH)</li>
<li>German, Liechtenstein (de_LI)</li>
</ul>
</td>
<td style="border:0;padding-left:5em;">
<ul style="margin-bottom:0;">
<li>Greek, Greece (el_GR)</li>
<li>Hindi, India (hi_IN)</li>
<li>Hungarian, Hungary (hu_HU)</li>
<li>Indonesian, Indonesia (id_ID)</li>
<li>Italian, Italy (it_IT)</li>
<li>Italian, Switzerland (it_CH)</li>
<li>Japanese, Japan (ja_JP)</li>
<li>Korean, Korea (ko_KR)</li>
<li>Latvian, Latvia (lv_LV)</li>
<li>Lithuanian, Lithuania (lt_LT)</li>
<li>Norwegian Bokmål, Norway (nb_NO)</li>
<li>Polish, Poland (pl_PL)</li>
<li>Portuguese, Brazil (pt_BR)</li>
<li>Portuguese, Portugal (pt_PT)</li>
<li>Romanian, Romania (ro_RO)</li>
<li>Russian, Russia (ru_RU)</li>
<li>Serbian, Serbia (sr_RS)</li>
<li>Slovak, Slovakia (sk_SK)</li>
<li>Slovenian, Slovenia (sl_SI)</li>
<li>Spanish, Spain (es_ES)</li>
<li>Spanish, US (es_US)</li>
<li>Swedish, Sweden (sv_SE)</li>
<li>Thai, Thailand (th_TH)</li>
<li>Tagalog, Philippines (tl_PH)</li>
<li>Turkish, Turkey (tr_TR)</li>
<li>Ukranian, Ukrania (uk_UA)</li>
<li>Vietnamese, Vietnam (vi_VN)</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

<p>Localized UI strings match the locales that are displayable in 
the emulator, accessible through the device Settings application.</p>

<h2 id="api-changes">API Changes</h2>

<h3 style="padding-top:0">Overview</h3>

<ul>

<li>Search framework</li>
  <ul>
    <li>Applications can now expose relevant content to users as search suggestions in the Quick Search Box, a new device-wide search capability that is accessible from the home screen. To support this, the search framework adds new attributes to the searchable metadata file. For complete information, see the {@link android.app.SearchManager SearchManager} documentation.</li>
  </ul>
</li>

<li>Accessibility framework</li>
  <ul>
    <li>New {@link android.view.accessibility android.accessibility} package
that includes classes for capturing accessibility events and forwarding them to
an {@link android.accessibilityservice AccessibilityService} handler. </li>
    <li>New {@link android.accessibilityservice AccessibilityService} package
that lets your application track user events and provide visual, audible, or
haptic feedback to the user. </li>
  </ul>
</li>

<li>Gestures</li>
  <ul>
    <li>New {@link android.gesture gesture} API for creating, recognizing,
loading, and saving gestures.</li>
  </ul>
</li>

<li>Text-to-speech</li>
  <ul>
    <li>New package {@link android.speech.tts android.speech.tts} provides
classes for synthesizing speech from text, for immediate playback or to create a
sound file.</li>
  </ul>
</li>

<li>Permissions</li>
  <ul>

    <li>New permissions for 
{@link android.Manifest.permission#CHANGE_WIFI_MULTICAST_STATE CHANGE_WIFI_MULTICAST_STATE}, 
{@link android.Manifest.permission#INSTALL_LOCATION_PROVIDER INSTALL_LOCATION_PROVIDER}, 
{@link android.Manifest.permission#READ_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS READ_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS},
{@link android.Manifest.permission#WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE}, and  
{@link android.Manifest.permission#WRITE_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS WRITE_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS}.</li>
  </ul>
</li>

<li>Graphics</li>
  <ul>
    <li>Classes in {@link android.graphics android.graphics} now support scaling
for different screen densities.</li>
  </ul>
</li>

<li>Telephony</li>
  <ul>
    <li>New {@link android.telephony.SmsManager SmsManager} and other classes
for sending and receiving SMS messages.</li>
  </ul>
</li>

<li>Utilities</li>
  <ul>
    <li>New {@link android.util.DisplayMetrics DisplayMetrics} fields for
determining the density of the current device screen.</li>
  </ul>
</li>

<li>Application-defined support for various screen densities</li>
   <p>Applications can now use a new element in their manifest files, <a
href="{@docRoot}guide/topics/manifest/supports-screen-element.html">&lt;supports-
screen&gt;</a> to indicate to the specific screen resolutions/densities that
they are designed to support. When the application is installed on a device
whose screen is not explicitly supported by the application, the system
runs the application in Compatibility Mode, where possible. </p>
</li>
</ul>

<h3 id="api-diff">API Change Details</h3>

<p>For a detailed view of API changes in this platform (API Level 4), see the <a
href="{@docRoot}sdk/api_diff/4/changes.html">API Differences Report</a>.</p>