android: convert non-latin symbols to latin

Sometime you might need to convert non-latin symbols to latin only.
There is plenty of such symbols, like ÖÄÜ etc.

How to do it in Android.
Since SDK version 9, there is simple method:

String stringNonLatin = "Hülkenberg";
String stringLatin= Normalizer.normalize(stringNonLatin, Normalizer.Form.NFC);

stringLatin variable will be “Hulkenberg”.

But if you still want to support Android 2.2 and lower, then you should use the following function found here:

private static final String PLAIN_ASCII = "AaEeIiOoUu" // grave
        + "AaEeIiOoUuYy" // acute
        + "AaEeIiOoUuYy" // circumflex
        + "AaOoNn" // tilde
        + "AaEeIiOoUuYy" // umlaut
        + "Aa" // ring
        + "Cc" // cedilla
        + "OoUu" // double acute
;

private static final String UNICODE = "\u00C0\u00E0\u00C8\u00E8\u00CC\u00EC\u00D2\u00F2\u00D9\u00F9"
        + "\u00C1\u00E1\u00C9\u00E9\u00CD\u00ED\u00D3\u00F3\u00DA\u00FA\u00DD\u00FD"
        + "\u00C2\u00E2\u00CA\u00EA\u00CE\u00EE\u00D4\u00F4\u00DB\u00FB\u0176\u0177"
        + "\u00C3\u00E3\u00D5\u00F5\u00D1\u00F1"
        + "\u00C4\u00E4\u00CB\u00EB\u00CF\u00EF\u00D6\u00F6\u00DC\u00FC\u0178\u00FF"
        + "\u00C5\u00E5" + "\u00C7\u00E7" + "\u0150\u0151\u0170\u0171";

/**
 * remove accented from a string and replace with ascii equivalent
 */
public static String removeAccents(String s) {
    if (s == null)
        return null;
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(s.length());
    int n = s.length();
    int pos = -1;
    char c;
    boolean found = false;
    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
        pos = -1;
        c = s.charAt(i);
        pos = (c <= 126) ? -1 : UNICODE.indexOf(c);
        if (pos > -1) {
            found = true;
            sb.append(PLAIN_ASCII.charAt(pos));
        } else {
            sb.append(c);
        }
    }
    if (!found) {
        return s;
    } else {
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

and our example will be following:

String stringNonLatin = "Hülkenberg";
String stringLatin= removeAccents(stringNonLatin);