Which versions of Android SDK support coding in which versions of Java?

Question

I was writing an Android app for Android SDK 2.3.3 but then I was asked to test it on a device running Android 2.2.1. So I set my target to 8 instead of 10. But then java.

Answer 1

You are trying to look at Android as a subset of Java which it is not. They are completely separated. Even though Android comes from Java, it as departed from it quite a bit and there is no correlation 'version-wise' anymore between the two.

What you can look at is the Android documentation. For every instruction/command/method/properties, at the top right you'll find the api level at which you are able to access said property.

Clicking on the api level will take you to a page which contains a table that translates api level to Android versions.

The easy way to find out if you are allowed to use a property is using eclipse and doing what you just did : Change the target api level. Then any call to methods or properties that are not available to you will produce fatal errors.