Let's face it: one of the main interests of the Android NDK is to write multimedia applications and games. Indeed, these programs consume lots of resources and need responsiveness. That is why one of the first available APIs (and almost the only one until recently) in Android NDK is an API for graphics: the Open Graphics Library for Embedded Systems (abbreviated OpenGL ES ).
OpenGL is a standard API created by Silicon Graphics and now managed by the Khronos Group (see http://www.khronos.org/). OpenGL ES derivative is available on many platforms such as iOS or Blackberry OS and is the best hope for writing portable and efficient graphics code. OpenGL can do both 2D and 3D graphics with programmable shaders (if hardware supports it). There are two main releases of OpenGL ES currently supported by Android: