Android SDK 16

[aMarCruz]

There is a NS version that supports Android SDK 16 ?

[slavchev]

The current minimum supported API level is 17. There are no technical limitations to support lower levels though. I will run some checks and report later what the actual minimum supported API level is. Meanwhile let's see what the community wants so we can prioritize this issue accordingly.

[aMarCruz]

@slavchev thanks :+1: In our poor México, there are still several million phones with Android 4.1

[pacal]

I agree. I am evaluating NS and ran into this issue today. The majority of my test devices are actually 4.1. Even an american Tmobile note2 which is quite popular, many are still on 4.1

[NathanaelA]

https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html According to Google, 12.1% are still on 4.1.x; that is actually a pretty large chunk of mobiles (that is probably more phones than Windows Mobile's entire market). So I would say 4.1 (API 16) should be the minimum supported on Android as it adds a pretty large chunk of phones. The SDK's versions below that is tiny in comparison

[slavchev]

OK guys,

Here are the results. I built the runtime against API level 15 and deployed our test app on the standard ARM emulator (4.0.4). All tests passed. I had to edit NativeScriptApplication.java and NativeScriptActivity.java files because these files were generated using reflection for API level 17. Besides that there were no other changes.

The results are not surprising. After all the runtime just serves as a Java<->JavaScript bridge and it is not bound to a particular API level. Once we decouple the Android specific classes (e.g. Application, Activity, etc.) from the runtime we will get the support for API level 15 (or maybe lower) for free. The good news is that we are already working on a related task (see https://github.com/NativeScript/android-runtime/issues/226).

[aMarCruz]

wow! api 16 is enough for me a big big thank you :+1:

[bradmartin]

Heck yes. I need this in my life :)

[rhaldkhein]

:+1: Hope this will be merged to release. Thank you very much in advance! :smile:

[aMarCruz]

+1

[slavchev]

Just a quick update - we won't ship this feature for the next release (1.5) which is coming after a week. Right now it is hard to say when we will ship it, I guess it will be ready for 1.6.

[sect2k]

Supporting only android 4.2 and newer is really a show stopper for using NativeScript currently, as it leaves out a good tenth of the user base (not all user have the latest, high-end phones).

Could you, please, provide some more information on availability of this, as "I guess it will be ready for 1.6" is very vague and not very helpful.

I love NativeScript, I think it's awesome, and has enormous potential, but with limitations like this it's just not ready to be considered for production use (yet).

[slavchev]

Could you, please, provide some more information on availability of this, as "I guess it will be ready for 1.6" is very vague and not very helpful.

You can find our roadmap at https://www.nativescript.org/roadmap

[sect2k]

I've seen the roadmap, it's not very detailed, and following issues here on GitHub, it seems it's not 100% accurate, more of a general direction thing.

Anyways, since this feature is not on the roadmap, does that mean there is no chance for this to make 1.6? If not then, when?

[slavchev]

We will try our best to ship this feature with 1.6. Also, as any other open source project we gladly accept pull requests from the community.

[sect2k]

@slavchev Good to hear, thanks. If 1.6 would support API level 15 (even just 16 would be welcome), that would be great. Support for lower levels, from my perspective, is not needed.

As for contributions, my android-runtime knowledge is lacking, but if you need help, point me in the right direction, and I'll do my best.

[ljx0517]

+1 Android 4.x.x is need

[slavchev]

This https://github.com/NativeScript/android-runtime/pull/364 is already merged into master branch. Now you should be able to build the runtime with SDK API level 10 (Android 2.3.3). I am waiting for admin team to upgrade our build infrastructure (not enough disk space) so I can change the project settings.

[andmm]

So now there is support for 4.0.x+? If so, that is very good news. I was considering nativescript but the lack of 4.0/4.1 was a big negative since there are a lot of devices still running those versions.

[aMarCruz]

I've been waiting for this to start a fork of our riot.js with native support for Android/iOS. Thanks!

[slavchev]

@aMarCruz please note that while the runtime can work on Android 2.3.3 (API level 10) the current version of the core modules still uses many APIs from API level 17+. Depending on your requirements it may be not possible to use the core modules as they are. The good news is that we are already discussing different approaches how to refactor the core modules so that lower Android API levels are supported. I encourage everyone to continue this discussion at core modules tracker as this issue will be closed once our build infrastructure has SDK 10 installed.

[aMarCruz]

@slavchev , I hope the more important ones will be ready soon, anyway this is a very good start point :+1:

PS. I think with the current mobile usage API level 15+ is sufficient, but thanks for your heavy work!

[Plamen5kov]

issue should be moved to {N} modues: https://github.com/NativeScript/NativeScript/issues/1742

[calebeaires]

+1

[MiaranaDIY]

any more details on this... so i can fix the message "The new package failed because the current SDK version is older than that required by the package." PS. our target phone is running Android 4.1.2 (API 16), and i'm using angular template for testing

[Plamen5kov]

@MiaranaDIY there's an issue in here: https://github.com/NativeScript/NativeScript/issues/694