Bug 732

JOGL 2.0 currently supports Android 2.3, it relies on Android native application API introduced in this version. JOGL 2.0 needs a second code path to support older versions of Android.

The priority of this request for enhancement is very low as there are fewer end users owning smartphones with such versions of Android as time goes by (about less than 10% of Android users nowadays).

However, the lack of support for these versions discourages some core developers of mainstream 3D engines to drop AndroidGL support in favor of JOGL 2.0 and there are still tons of games on the Play Store that support Android 2.0.

In some countries in the western Europe, some governements plan to increase the minimum statutory warranty in order to reduce the ecological footprint of hardware renewal by encouraging customers to keep their electronic devices longer even though the industry prefer encouraging planned obsolescence to artificially force them to renew their hardware even though it is not "necessary". The support of "old" hardware can sometimes be done without compromising the whole framework and I would be happy if we could add some support of Android 2.0 into JOGL & NEWT. We would then support an ecological trend, play in the same field than AndroidGL and attract some games developers.

I still own an HTC Desire Z under Android 2.2.1, I can contribute. The first step will consist in finding the APIs which could be used as a replacement of Android native application API, maybe some of them are only exposed in the Java API of Android in earlier versions.