Google releases Android 1.0 SDK

Yes, that means we're officially at 1.0. Of course the SDK won't remain static—we'll keep improving the tools by adding features and fixing bugs. But now developers can rely on the APIs in the SDK, and can update their applications to run on Android 1.0-compatible devices.

Source code is supposed to be available by the end of October, though hosting and governance are still up in the air. Also there's no word yet about how phone users will get updated versions of Android. Will they get it from Google or from the carrier?

Compared the 0.9_beta, the changes in 1.0 are relatively minor and almost entirely of interest only to developers. Here's what I found by reading the API diffs report:

Added/Changed

• View sound effects for clicking and touching
• New permissions and permission groups
• The ability to add extra spacing between lines of text
• New action for rebooting the device
• Version numbers
• Camera shutter callback
• Callback for sensor accuracy changes
• Lots of new testing classes (see android.test)
• Lots of changes in the WiFi classes
• Ability to query a file system for free space
• Callback for key releases in text fields
• Exposed org.apache.http.impl and org.xmlpull.v1 packages as public

Removed

• Sync providers (they were briefly added in 0.9)
• The ability to delete packages (that's a strange omission, can someone verify?)
• Video recording (you can still do audio recording)
• Several public fields in different classes are now private or protected (general API hygiene)