Google has just released the latest revision to the Android platform, Android 3.2 . Android 3 as you might know is Google’s Android solution for Tablets.
The latest version brings a number of enhancements, and touts optimization across the system that aim to improve the performance of the OS on current Tablet devices using the OS.
Android has a large and growing collection of applications that are created for mobiles, and Android 3.2 introduces a new compatibility zoom feature to enable applications designed for older, smaller-screen devices to run on Android 3.2.
The new compatibility zoom feature adds a button to the system bar that offers two modes of operation when a user is running an app designed for older versions of Android. A “Zoom to fill screen” option enables this compatibility mode, where Android emulates a smaller screen device for the application, but scales it up so it takes up the entire screen space. Another option “Stretch to fill screen” uses the usual methods of layout resizing that might not work well with older applications.
Android also now allows users to sync media from their SD card, if their device support s them.
For developers, the API for managing screens support has been extended, thus allowing the same application package to target a wider variety of devices, and to look better on such devices by using the correct resources. New manifest attributes enable more precise control over the UI for different sized screens.
Applications can declare the maximum and minimum screen sizes they support, and soon the Android Market will allow filtering based on this attribute. Applications can now also support TVs running Android, by specifying the resources to use when android is running on such devices.
For more information about this release check out the Android developer website.