It is made for developers in the mobile and gaming industry and is working toward allowing for easy porting of applications across multiple platforms.

The OpenSL ES API has five major features: The features of Audio Playback and Recording and Basic MIDI are common with OpenMAX AL. OpenSL ES utilizes an object oriented design to give application developers access to the audio functionality.

The object model is shared with OpenMAX AL, and a device manufacturer can choose to implement one or both of the APIs.

Together the two APIs give access to a wide range of functionality of the device's multimedia engine.

The design goal of OpenSL ES is to give application developers access to advanced audio features such as 3D positional audio and MIDI playback while striving for easy application porting between manufacturers and platforms.