What is android's icicle parameter?

Question

I've notice in some coding people use icicle with the onCreate method and I was wondering what it is exactly:

public class About extends Activity {
 @Override
 protected void onCreate(Bundle icicle) {
      super.onCreate(icicle);
      setContentView(R.layout.whatup);
}

Is this the same thing as savedInstanceState?

Answer 1

The name isn't magic. It's just a placeholder for one of the formal parameters. As shown by the API, onCreate takes one Bundle parameter. It's up to you what to call it.

Answer 2

"icicle" is sometimes used as the name of the parameter because onSaveInstanceState() used to be called onFreeze().