API Level: 15
Android 4.0.3 (ICE_CREAM_SANDWICH_MR1
)
is an incremental release of the Android 4.x
(Ice Cream Sandwich) platform family. This release includes new features for
users and developers, API changes, and various bug fixes.
For developers, the Android 4.0.3 platform is available as a downloadable component for the Android SDK. The downloadable platform includes an Android library and system image, as well as a set of emulator skins and more. To get started developing or testing against Android 4.0.3, use the Android SDK Manager to download the platform into your SDK.
API Overview
The sections below provide a technical overview of new APIs in Android 4.0.3.
Social stream API in Contacts Provider
Applications that use social stream data such as status updates and check-ins can now sync that data with each of the user’s contacts, providing items in a stream along with photos for each.
The database table that contains an individual contact’s social stream is
defined by ContactsContract.StreamItems
, the Uri for
which is nested within the ContactsContract.RawContacts
directory to which the stream items belong. Each social stream table includes
several columns for metadata about each stream item, such as an icon
representing the source (an avatar), a label for the item, the primary text
content, comments about the item (such as responses from other people), and
more. Photos associated with a stream are stored in another table, defined by
ContactsContract.StreamItemPhotos
, which is available
as a sub-directory of the ContactsContract.StreamItems
Uri.
See ContactsContract.StreamItems
and
ContactsContract.StreamItemPhotos
for more information.
To read or write social stream items for a contact, an application must
request permission from the user by declaring <uses-permission
android:name="android.permission.READ_SOCIAL_STREAM">
and/or <uses-permission
android:name="android.permission.WRITE_SOCIAL_STREAM">
in their manifest files.
Calendar Provider
- Adds the class
CalendarContract.Colors
to represent
a color table in the Calendar
Provider. The class provides fields for accessing
colors available for a given account. Colors are referenced by
COLOR_KEY
which must be unique for a given account name/type. These values can only be
updated by the sync adapter.
- Adds
ALLOWED_AVAILABILITY
and
ALLOWED_ATTENDEE_TYPES
for exchange/sync support.
- Adds
TYPE_RESOURCE
(such as conference rooms) for attendees and
AVAILABILITY_TENTATIVE
,
as well as EVENT_COLOR_KEY
for events.
Home screen widgets
CalendarContract.Colors
to represent
a color table in the Calendar
Provider. The class provides fields for accessing
colors available for a given account. Colors are referenced by
COLOR_KEY
which must be unique for a given account name/type. These values can only be
updated by the sync adapter.ALLOWED_AVAILABILITY
and
ALLOWED_ATTENDEE_TYPES
for exchange/sync support.TYPE_RESOURCE
(such as conference rooms) for attendees and
AVAILABILITY_TENTATIVE
,
as well as EVENT_COLOR_KEY
for events.Starting from Android 4.0, home screen widgets should no longer include their
own padding. Instead, the system now automatically adds padding for each widget,
based the characteristics of the current screen. This leads to a more uniform,
consistent presentation of widgets in a grid. To assist applications that host
home screen widgets, the platform provides a new method
getDefaultPaddingForWidget()
. Applications can call this method to get the
system-defined padding and account for it when computing the number of cells to
allocate to the widget.
Spell-checking
- For apps that accessing spell-checker services, a new
cancel()
method cancels any pending and running spell-checker tasks in a session. - For spell-checker services, a new suggestions flag,
RESULT_ATTR_HAS_RECOMMENDED_SUGGESTIONS
, lets the services distinguish higher-confidence suggestions from lower-confidence ones. For example, a spell-checker could set the flag if an input word is not in the user dictionary but has likely suggestions, or not set the flag if an input word is not in the dictionary and has suggestions that are likely to be less useful.Apps connected to the spell-checker can use the
RESULT_ATTR_HAS_RECOMMENDED_SUGGESTIONS
flag in combination with other suggestion attributes, as well as thegetSuggestionsAttributes()
andgetSuggestionsCount()
methods, to determine whether to mark input words as typos and offer suggestions. - A new
FLAG_AUTO_CORRECTION
style for text spans indicates that auto correction is about to be applied to a word/text that the user is typing/composing. This type of suggestion is rendered differently, to indicate the auto correction is happening.
Bluetooth
New public methods fetchUuidsWithSdp()
and getUuids()
let apps determine the features
(UUIDs) supported by a remote device. In the case of fetchUuidsWithSdp()
, the system performs a
service discovery on the remote device to get the UUIDs supported, then
broadcasts the result in an ACTION_UUID
intent.
UI toolkit
New methods setUserVisibleHint()
and
getUserVisibleHint()
allow a
fragment to set a hint of whether or not it is currently user-visible. The
system defers the start of fragments that are not user-visible until the loaders
for visible fragments have run. The visibility hint is "true" by default.
Graphics
- New method
setDefaultBufferSize(int, int)
inSurfaceTexture
sets the default size of the image buffers. This method may be used to set the image size when producing images withCanvas
(vialockCanvas(Rect)
), or OpenGL ES (via an EGLSurface). - Adds definitions for the enums of the GL_OES_EGL_image_external OpenGL ES extension —
GL_REQUIRED_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS_OES
,GL_SAMPLER_EXTERNAL_OES
,GL_TEXTURE_BINDING_EXTERNAL_OES
, andGL_TEXTURE_EXTERNAL_OES
.
Accessibility
- Clients of
RemoteViews
can now use the methodsetContentDescription()
to set and get the content description of any View in the inflated layout. - The methods
getMaxScrollX()
,getMaxScrollY()
,setMaxScrollX()
, andsetMaxScrollY()
allow apps to get and set the maximum scroll offset for anAccessibilityRecord
object. - When touch-exploration mode is enabled, a new secure setting
ACCESSIBILITY_SPEAK_PASSWORD
indicates whether the user requests the IME to speak text entered in password fields, even when a headset is not in use. By default, no password text is spoken unless a headset is in use.
Text-to-speech
- Adds the new method
getFeatures()
for querying and enabling network TTS support. - Adds a new listener class,
UtteranceProgressListener
, that engines can register to receive notification of speech-synthesis errors.
Database
- A new
CrossProcessCursorWrapper
class lets content providers return results for a cross-process query more efficiently. The new class is a useful building block for wrapping cursors that will be sent to processes remotely. It can also transform normalCursor
objects intoCrossProcessCursor
objects transparently.The
CrossProcessCursorWrapper
class fixes common performance issues and bugs that applications have encountered when implementing content providers. - The
CursorWindow(java.lang.String)
constructor now takes a name string as input. The system no longer distinguishes between local and remote cursor windows, soCursorWindow(boolean)
is now deprecated.
Intents
Adds new categories for targeting common types of applications on the
device, such as CATEGORY_APP_BROWSER
, CATEGORY_APP_CALENDAR
, CATEGORY_APP_MAPS
, and more.
Camera
MediaMetadataRetriever
adds the new constantMETADATA_KEY_LOCATION
to let apps access retrieve location information for an image or video.CamcorderProfile
adds the QVGA (320x240) resolution profiles. Quality level is represented by theQUALITY_QVGA
.andQUALITY_TIME_LAPSE_QVGA
constants.- New methods
setVideoStabilization()
,setVideoStabilization()
, andisVideoStabilizationSupported()
let you check and manage video stabilization for aCamera
.
Permissions
The following are new permissions:
READ_SOCIAL_STREAM
andWRITE_SOCIAL_STREAM
: Allow a sync adapter to read and write social stream data to a contact in the shared Contacts Provider.
For a detailed view of all API changes in Android 4.0.3 (API Level 15), see the API Differences Report.
API Level
The Android 4.0.3 API is assigned an integer identifier—15—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 4.0.3 in your application, you need compile the
application against an Android platform that supports API level 15 or
higher. Depending on your needs, you might also need to add an
android:minSdkVersion="15"
attribute to the
<uses-sdk>
element.
For more information, see the API Levels document.