7. Hardware Compatibility

If a device includes a particular hardware component that has a corresponding API for third-party developers, the device implementation MUST implement that API as described in the Android SDK documentation. If an API in the SDK interacts with a hardware component that is stated to be optional and the device implementation does not possess that component:

• Complete class definitions (as documented by the SDK) for the component APIs MUST still be presented.
• The API’s behaviors MUST be implemented as no-ops in some reasonable fashion.
• API methods MUST return null values where permitted by the SDK documentation.
• API methods MUST return no-op implementations of classes where null values are not permitted by the SDK documentation.
• API methods MUST NOT throw exceptions not documented by the SDK documentation.

A typical example of a scenario where these requirements apply is the telephony API: Even on non-phone devices, these APIs must be implemented as reasonable no-ops.

Device implementations MUST consistently report accurate hardware configuration information via the getSystemAvailableFeatures() and hasSystemFeature(String) methods on the android.content.pm.PackageManager class for the same build fingerprint.