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Comment by mhaymo | Hacker News Reader

Android already supports most of Java 7 http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system/user-gui...

I'm not aware of any plans to support Java 8 yet, but I haven't been looking.

They support Java 7 syntax, however they do not have the API improvements in Java 7. For example, Java 7 introduced a much improved File IO API in the java.nio.file package. It has very useful classes like Files (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/nio/file/Files...)

Android does not have any of this (http://developer.android.com/reference/packages.html) because the Apache Harmony project died before it could implement Java 7 API changes.

This is a much bigger issue for Java 8. Just supporting only Java 8 syntax changes greatly reduces the benefits of the new lambda and default methods. Much of the power of the changes, especially lambda, require the changes to the collections API.

Guava works on it though, thank goodness!

No, Android does not have any of this because Apache Harmony was killed by the Java 7 API changes. Namely, the documentation was no longer open, and Oracle withheld the TCK, effectively killing Harmony by making it uncertifiable as a Java implementation.

Harmony didn't die per se - It was killed by Oracle. Google's rationale for engineering a Java-ish VM with Java APIs was only legal up until Java 6.

If you target only KitKat and don't mind missing some of the Java 7 new APIs.

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