Mono for Android 4.1

We have been working on various major upgrades to Mono for Android, and today we are releasing it to users in the updater’s Alpha Release Channel.

These are some of the highlights of this release:

• Java Bindings: we now have a project type that you can use to bind third-party Java libraries
• Android Compatibility Library bindings: now you can use the compatibility libraries that allow developers to use new Android APIs on older devices.
• Strongly-typed APIs: we improved upon the Java bindings by providing strongly typed enumeration values, reducing the amount of guesswork required when using Android APIs and letting the IDE do the work for you.
• C# dynamic is now supported on Android
• Extended our Java interop story: it is now easier to expose C# APIs to the Java world

Other features include:

• Smaller development runtime (50% smaller)
• Device picker in Visual Studio (for those of you testing/deploying to multiple Android devices)
• New templates for Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and Android Fragments
• Usability fixes to our Visual Studio plugin.

Check the release notes for all the other features and the details on the above features.