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The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets you build performance-critical portions of your apps in native code. It provides headers and libraries that allow you to build activities, handle user input, use hardware sensors, access application resources, and more, when programming in C or C++. If you write native code, your applications are still packaged into an .apk file and they still run inside of a virtual machine on the device. The fundamental Android application model does not change.

Using native code does not result in an automatic performance increase, but always increases application complexity. If you have not run into any limitations using the Android framework APIs, you probably do not need the NDK. Read What is the NDK? for more information about what the NDK offers and whether it will be useful to you.

The NDK is designed for use only in conjunction with the Android SDK. If you have not already installed and setup the Android SDK, please do so before downloading the NDK.

FEATURES:

· A set of tools and build files used to generate native code libraries from C and C++ sources
· A way to embed the corresponding native libraries into application package files (.apks) that can be deployed on Android devices
· A set of native system headers and libraries that will be supported in all future versions of the Android platform, starting from Android 1.5
· Documentation, samples, and tutorials