I would like to handle pinch events in my Android application to zoom in and out.
I believe Android 2.0 has multi-touch functionality, and heard that Android 1.6 might o
Android 1.6 does not support multi-touch, Android 2.0 and above does, that means that you would need to have different OnTouchHandlers that you can swap in based on the version of Android you detect. For more information about how to implement the pinch-zoom, have a look at this thread.
A great article by Ed Burnette (Hello Android Author) on multi touch (including pinch zoom) can be found here: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/how-to-use-multi-touch-in-android-2/1747
Here's an article on the Android developer blog about taking advantage of capability of the newer APIs on devices that support them, while gracefully continuing to support older devices. http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/04/backward-compatibility-for-android.html