AdMob in-game ads

Question

I got the latest AdMob SDK. After i added the activity like this:

<activity android:name="com.google.ads.AdActivity"
    android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenLayout|uiMode|screenSize|smallestScreenSize"/>

i got the following error: "Error: String types not allowed (at 'configChanges' with value 'keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenLayout|uiMode|screenSize| smallestScreenSize')."

After some diggings here on this support forum i understood that i need to take the Android 3.2 SDK for the AdMob to work.

HOWEVER! My application is targeted for Android 2.1 (and on). So if i target the app for the Android 3.2 (only because of AdMob), will it block the phones running Eclair/Froyo/Gingerbread from installing/running my application?

Answer 1

You need to get the Android 3.2 SDK and "compile" against it by setting your project.properties file to target=android-13. You can still have your apps run on Android 2.1 and above by setting android:minSdkVersion="7".

Answer 2

The only thing that this means for you is that you have to be careful to not use any Android classes or methods that are not supported by 2.1

And since you'll never know it... your app will crashes on thousands of devices and know one will know the reason why.

AdMob makes it nearly impossible to do something as simple as:

I want to support OS 2.2 and newer.

You can do it with nearly everything ELSE... but not AdMob.