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I have an external jar that I can use in my Android application, I just reference it as an external jar from my application. Is there any benefit in creating an Android library project with this external jar for Android applications to use, or is this pretty much the same as referencing the external jar?
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A JAR serves the same function an an Assembly in the C#/. net world. It's a collection of java classes, a manifest, and optionally other resources, such as properties files. A library is a more abstract concept, in java, a library is usually packaged as a JAR (Java ARchive), or a collection of JARs.
Unlike JAR files, AAR files offer the following functionality for Android applications: AAR files can contain Android resources and a manifest file, which allows you to bundle in shared resources like layouts and drawables in addition to Java classes and methods.
The Android Support Library package is a set of code libraries that provide backward-compatible versions of Android framework APIs as well as features that are only available through the library APIs. Each Support Library is backward-compatible to a specific Android API level.
Making a library project makes sense only in one case: if you want to share some application resources across all the apps (for example layouts, drawables, strings etc). If you just need some common java code there is no any difference between external jar and library project.
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