New to android development: What features will I lose out on if I choose to support Gingerbread with support libaries?

Question

I keep reading online that if possible, it makes sense to ditch the support libraries and develop only for 4.0+ devices. They all mention that this would would allow me access to "more features".

However, I cant seem to find any articles or questions that address these differences or specific features that I'll miss out on if I use the support libraries. I'm starting work on my first app and I'd love to get some inputs from the community.

Answer 1

The support libraries add a specific subset of features, they do not aim to enable backwards compatibility for every feature added since 2.3.

So check out the list of compatibility features here: http://developer.android.com/tools/support-library/features.html

And compare it against the list of new platform features: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.0.html

To figure out what you're missing out on.

Edit: one quick example which comes to mind is the NumberPicker controller, which is in 3.0+ but NOT included in the support libraries (at time of writing)