I am learning Android development, specifically to eventually do OpengL 2.0 ES on it.

So far I have read that the NDK supports Opengl 2.0 ES.

However, is there also a Java API for it?

If there is a Java API for it, which one is recommended? I know both C++ and Java, so it is not a big deal if I have to use the NDK, but I would prefer to work only in Java if possible and without a big performance hit.

If making a game, then the ideal thing to do would be to use both. The SDK (java) should be your primary utility, however you can use the NDK (C++) to perform more memory intensive actions in order to make them perform faster.

As far as OpenGL ES 2.0 goes, It is currently only supported on devices running Android OS version 2.2. With this said, older devices--running earlier versions of the Android OS--do have support for 1.1 and 1.0 (Most devices have 1.1 support, however some VERY old devices will only supoprt 1.0).

All 3 versions of OpenGL can be found on the SDK's online documentation (http://developer.android.com/reference/ ... mmary.html).

There is an "official" Java binding in FroYo for OpenGL ES 2.0. The only thing they don't tell you is that it is horribly broken and doesn't support VBOs. It was kicked out with no testing apparently and we are stuck with a broken binding. Check out this post for a 3rd party workaround:
http://apistudios.com/hosted/marzec/bad ... ess/?p=760

:: sigh :: Google... When will you learn that quality is important.

Basically I don't recommend using the official OpenGL ES 2.0 binding ever and just a 3rd party Java binding because otherwise what are you going to do.... Detect if FroYo then use 3rd party binding and entirely different code. Or if Android 3.0+ use official bindings and entirely different code. It's a real bummer stuff like this easily slips into Android.

A benefit of using the Bad Logic or any other 3rd party Java binding is that it works out of the box on all devices that support OpenGL ES 2.x and is not limited to being tied to the OS release itself like the "official" bindings.