Android 3.0 Honeycomb preview SDK Released

Google today released a preview version of the Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” Software Developer Kit to allow developers to start testing their apps on tablets.

The SDK includes APIs that aren’t final yet, but they do help developers familiarize themselves with the new UI framework for larger displays including support for Honeycomb widgets, themes, notifications, and drag and drop functionality that will be included in Android 3.0.

Here’s a snippet of the highlights from the official blog post.

• UI framework for creating great apps for larger screen devices: Developers can use a new UI components, new themes, richer widgets and notifications, drag and drop, and other new features to create rich and engaging apps for users on larger screen devices.
• High-performance 2D and 3D graphics: A new property-based animation framework lets developers add great visual effects to their apps. A built-in GL renderer lets developers request hardware-acceleration of common 2D rendering operations in their apps, across the entire app or only in specific activities or views. For adding rich 3D scenes, developers take advantage of a new 3D graphics engine called Renderscript.
• Support for multicore processor architectures: Android 3.0 is optimized to run on either single- or dual-core processors, so that applications run with the best possible performance.
• Rich multimedia: New multimedia features such as HTTP Live streaming support, a pluggable DRM framework, and easy media file transfer through MTP/PTP, give developers new ways to bring rich content to users.
• New types of connectivity: New APIs for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP let applications offer audio streaming and headset control. Support for Bluetooth insecure socket connection lets applications connect to simple devices that may not have a user interface.
• Enhancements for enterprise: New administrative policies, such as for encrypted storage and password expiration, help enterprise administrators manage devices more effectively.

The Apps built with the Android 3.0 Platform Preview cannot be published on the Android Market. A final SDK will be released “in the weeks ahead,” Google said.