I am writing an SDK that will be used by Android devices with API level 15 and up. I'm currently targeting sdk version 22. What I'm trying to accomplish is to determine whether or not the screen is on or off. Sometimes I will be doing this while the app is in the foreground or background and sometimes I will be doing this when the app is closed, by using an Alarm. What I want to be able to do is ask the framework if the screen is on or off, but it doesn't look like that's possible for android versions <= 19.
It looks like sdk version 19 allows a device to use PowerManager.isScreenOn() to determine the state of the screen, but when version 20 came out that method was deprecated and now you can call PowerManager.isInteractive() but that only works on devices running API 20 and up. If you try to call isScreenOn() using a device running API 19 or less the call really just wraps isInteractive() and you end up getting a method not found in your logs and don't actually get the data you desire.
So it seems like if I always want to know the current state of the screen for devices <= 19 that one work around is to start a background service that is basically always runs and that registers a broadcast receiver that looks for the ACTION_SCREEN_ON and ACTION_SCREEN_OFF Intents. That obviously isn't desirable because then I have to have an always on service which is not recommended.
I suppose another workaround is to compile agains sdk 19 when I build, which would make the isScreenOn() call available (and make the isInteractive() call unavailable). That might be a possibility but seems like a poor workaround because I'd essentially be stuck at this sdk level until either the framework backports this functionality or sdks 15 - 19 are used by few enough users that it no longer makes sense to support them.
Am I correct in my assessment of the situation?
Can anyone comment on the two work arounds proposed or suggest alternatives?
