Today Google released the Android Native Development Kit revision 3 (NDK r3), offering expanded capabilities to Android developers. Most interesting to end users is probably enhanced support for OpenGL ES 2.0, now offering improved graphics rendering through vertex and fragment shader programs. Android has been roundly criticized for lagging behind Apple’s iPhone OS in gaming support. While the new NDK r3 can be used to target devices running Android 1.5 and higher, the enhanced OpenGL support will only target Android 2.0 and higher devices, like the Motorola Droid or the Google Nexus One. On the back end, the new Android NDK r3 also offers refreshed binaries in line with the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 4.4.0, which Google says will generate more compact and efficient machine code.
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