Why is NotificationCompat needed?
android, compatibility, notifications
Solution
You can use things like NotificationCompat.Builder#setLargeIcon(Bitmap) to allow you to take full advantage of Android 3.0+ with things like the large icon, while maintaining compatibility on versions of Android prior to 3.0 that do not support such things.
Problem
Specifically, I think anything done with NotificationCompat can be done using the default API (level 8). What am I missing here? What does NotificationCompat introduce that cannot be done using 2.2 API? Source: http://developer.android.com/sdk/compatibility-library.html#Notes