What does the API level mean?

Question

I am wondering what exactly the API level means. I could not find the answer by doing a search on Google.

Can someone explain what the term API layer means?

Answer 1

This actually sums it up pretty nicely.

API levels usually mean that as a programmer, you can communicate with the built-in and device functions. As the API level increases, the functionality develops (although some of them may become obsolete).

The choice of API level for application development must take into account at least two things:

• Current distribution - How many devices my application can really support, if it was developed for API level 9, it cannot work at API level 8 or lower, then "only" about 60% of devices can run it (though, until the date when this the post was made).
• Choosing a lower level API may support more devices, but there will be less functionality for your application. you can also complicate the work that you could easily get if you chose a higher level API.

Android API levels can be divided into five main groups (not scientific, but what the hell):

• Android 1.5 - 2.3 (API levels 3-10) - Android specifically for smartphones.
• Android 3.0 - 3.2 (API Levels 11-13) - Honeycomb, Android for tablets.
• Android 4.0 - 4.4 (API levels 14-19) - a large merger with many additional features, a completely updated version of Android for phones and tablets.
• Android 5.0 - 5.1 (API levels 21-22) - material design introduced.
• Android 6.0 - 6 .... (API levels 23 -...) - Runtime permissions, Apache HTTP client removed

Answer 2

The API level is basically a version of Android. Instead of using the name of the version of Android (for example, 2.0, 2.3, 3.0, etc.) an integer is used. This number increases with each version. Android 1.6 is API level 4, Android 2.0 is API 5 level, Android 2.0.1 is API 6 level, etc.

Answer 3

API is a ready-made library of source code.

In Java, for example, an API is a collection of related classes and interfaces that come with packages. This figure shows the libraries included in the standard Java API. Packages are indicated by their color.