Does android-support-v13.jar have any use in a project that targets minSdkVersion=“15”?

Question

I am a little unsure of exactly what android-support-v13.jar includes within it even though I have read the documentation and a couple of other stackoverflow questions.

As I understand it, android-support-v13.jar allows you to use features and objects from newer versions of the SDK (> 13) on devices running older versions (<= 13) of Android. If this is all it does it would be of no benefit to any device running an Android version > 13.

I am unclear on whether android-support-v13.jar allows me to use features and objects from older versions (<= 13) that may have been removed in newer versions (I realise that if this is possible it would be unwise as anything removed was probably removed for good reason).

So my question is given an app with:

<uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="15" android:targetSdkVersion="19" />

does android-support-v13.jar provide any useful function or can I safely remove it? It is part of my app because it is automatically added when creating a new Android app.

Answer 1

android-support-v13 contains android-support-v4 which offers a lot of additional features not found in any SDK level.

Out of features added since API level 15, you'd get access to:

• Nested Fragments (which were added only in Android 4.2) are available using support library versions of Fragments
• Renderscript intrinics were also only introduced in Android 4.2 and important if you are doing things such as real time image processing
• NotificationCompat is the only way to get access to the Android Wear Notification API prior to Android L devices

And certain libraries, such as those required for ChromeCast support, strongly suggest using support Fragments and ActionBarActivity.

Of course, if you are using support Fragments (say, to get access to nested fragments), then there's no reason to use android-support-v13 as v13 only adds some native Fragment equivalents to the support v4 versions so you could safely only use android-support-v4