Getting ready for Android 1.5
I'm excited to announce that starting today, developers can get an early look at the SDK for the next version of the Android platform. This new version (which will be 1.5) is based on the cupcake branch from the Android Open Source Project.
Context & Ripple Effects
The 1.5 early look extends a rhythm Google set at launch: the first Android OS early-look SDK shipped back in November 2007, followed by the m5-rc14 SDK refresh in February 2008, so developers have never waited for a finished device to start building against the next platform version.
What distinguishes this drop is its provenance — 1.5 is cut directly from the cupcake branch of the Android Open Source Project, tying the public SDK to the same codebase carriers and handset makers are integrating, rather than a parallel internal build. The pickup was narrow (the SDK page mirrored on developer.android.com), consistent with a developer-facing announcement rather than a consumer launch.
First-order effects
- Developers get working access to the cupcake API surface months before consumer devices ship it, so applications can be rebuilt and retested against 1.5 behavior instead of being caught by the update.
Second-order effects
- Because the SDK is drawn from the open-source branch, OEMs and carriers integrating cupcake face a developer ecosystem that is already validating their build — raising the cost of shipping forks or delays that diverge from the published API baseline.
Third-order effects
- If every Android release follows this SDK-from-open-source-branch pattern, Google's real product becomes the cadence itself: an open-source tree feeding a public preview that de facto sets the compatibility contract for the whole handset ecosystem.
The trend: Android is institutionalizing a public SDK-ahead-of-hardware pipeline fed by the Android Open Source Project, turning each open-source branch into the de facto compatibility standard for the ecosystem.