Posted by, Jamal Eason, Product Manager, Android
One the most requested features we receive is to make app builds and deployment faster in Android Studio. Today at the Android Developer Summit, we’re announcing a preview of Android Studio 2.0 featuring Instant Run that will dramatically improve your development workflow. With Android Studio 2.0, we are also including a preview of a new GPU Profiler.
All these updates are available now in the canary release channel, so we can get your feedback. Since this initial release is a preview, you may want to download and run an additional copy of Android Studio in parallel with your current version.
Android Studio’s instant run feature allows you to to quickly see your changes running on your device or emulator.
Getting started is easy. If you create a new project with Android Studio 2.0 then your projects are already setup. If you have a pre-existing app open Settings/Preferences, the go to Build, Execution, Deployment → Instant Run. Click on Enable Instant Run... This will ensure you have the correct gradle plugin for your project to work with Instant Run.
Select Run as normal and Android Studio will perform normal compilation, packaging and install steps and run your app on your device or emulator. After you make edits to your source code or resources, pressing Run again will deploy your changes directly into the running app.
For a more detailed guide setup and try Instant Run, click here.
Profiling your OpenGL ES Android code is now even easier with the GPU Profiler in Android Studio. The tool is in early preview, but is very powerful and not only shows details about the GL State and Commands, you can record entire sessions and walk through the GL Framebuffer and Textures as your app is running OpenGL ES Code.
To get started, first download the GPU Debugging Tools package from the Android Studio SDK Manager. Click here for more details about the GPU Profiler tool and how to set up your Android app project for profiling.
This is just a taste of some of the bigger updates in this latest release of Android Studio. We'll be going through the full release in more detail at the Android Developer Summit (livestreamed on Monday and Tuesday). Over the next few weeks, we'll be showing how to take advantage of even more features in Android Studio 2.0, so be sure to check back in.
If you're interested in more Android deep technical content, we will be streaming over 16 hours of content from the inaugural Android Developer Summit over the next two days, and together with Codelabs, all of this content will be available online after the Summit concludes.
Android Studio 2.0 is available today on the Android Studio canary channel. Let us know what you think of these new features by connecting with the Android Studio development team on Google+.
Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team
Gifted Mom is an app developed in Cameroon which provides users with basic, yet critical information about pregnancy, breastfeeding and child vaccinations. The widespread use of Android smartphones in Africa has meant that Gifted Mom has been able to reach more people at scale and improve lives.
Watch the creators of Gifted Mom, developer Alain Nteff and doctor Conrad Tankou, explain how they built their business and launched Gifted Mom on Google Play. They also talk about their plans to grow and help people in other developing countries across the continent in the next three years, in order to ultimately tackle maternal and infant mortality.
Find out more about building apps for Android and how to find success on Google Play.
Posted by Alex Ames, Fun Propulsion Labs*
Originally posted to the Google Developers blog
At Fun Propulsion Labs we spend some of our time building sample games to help demonstrate how to make easy-to-build, performant, cross-platform games. With the growth of Google Cardboard, we got to work and over many long evenings, feeding our animal hunger on sushi, we came up with Zooshi. Zooshi is an open source, cross-platform game written in C++ which supports:
Zooshi serves as a demonstration of how to build Android games using a suite of newly released and updated open source game technologies from Google:
As in our previous release, Pie Noon, we also made extensive use of Flatbuffers, Mathfu, fplutil, and WebP.
You can download the game in the Play Store and the latest open source release from our GitHub page. We invite you to learn from the code to see how you can apply these libraries and utilities in your own Android games. Take advantage of our discussion list if you have any questions, and don’t forget to toss some sushi around while you’re at it!
* Fun Propulsion Labs is a team within Google that's dedicated to advancing gaming on Android and other platforms.
ndk { abiFilters = ['armeabi-v7a','x86'] }
APP_ABI := armeabi-v7a x86
Posted by Alistair Pott, Product Manager, Google Play
Available in more than 190 countries, Google Play is a global platform for developers to build high quality apps and successful businesses. But every market has its own unique challenges and opportunities. Purchasing behavior, in particular, varies significantly between markets. So to provide developers with more flexibility, we've worked to adapt Google Play pricing options to better suit local consumers and make content more accessible.
Following a successful pilot in India earlier this year, today, developers have the option to reduce the price of their premium titles and in-app products in 17 more countries to these new minimum thresholds:
Countries affected:
You can lower the price of your apps and games right away by visiting the Google Play Developer Console and clicking on “Pricing & Distribution” or “In-app Products” for your apps.
We hope this change allows you to reach more people around the world so that you can continue to grow your business on Google Play.
Posted by, Rich Hyndman, Developer Advocate
Testing is important whether you’re building a dedicated app for the workplace, rolling out new features, or making it easy for IT departments to deploy.
Test DPC is now available for you and is a fully featured, open-source, sample Device Policy Controller (DPC) which allows you to test your apps with any Android for Work feature. A DPC manages the security policies and work apps on devices using Android for Work. You can configure Test DPC to be either a device or profile owner to test all the Android for Work scenarios:
Test DPC simplifies testing and development because you can use it to set the kinds of policies an IT administrator might enforce. You can establish app and intent restrictions, set up managed work profiles, enforce policies, and can even set up fully managed Android devices — something you might find as an info board or kiosk in a public place.
The Test DPC app can be found on Google Play with the source on GitHub. Set up Test DPC as a device/profile owner on your device by checking out this user guide.
If you want to learn more about Android for Work and its capabilities, check out Android for Work Application Developer Guide for full guidance on optimizing your app for Android for Work.
Note: Your test Android device needs to run Android 5.0 or later and be able to support Android for Work natively.
Posted by Laurence Moroney, Developer Advocate
We’re delighted to announce the availability of Google Play services 8.3. There’s a lot of new information to share with you about what’s available to you in this release.
A big part of this release is focused on user identity. We’ve revamped the Sign In with Google APIs to make implementation simpler and provide users a streamlined experience. First off, the new Google Sign-In no longer requires the device accounts permissions, a big win when you start to develop for Marshmallow. The API also supports the latest Google branding. When using Google Play services 8.3, you’ll find a SignInButton that looks like this with the default scopes:
Previously, users would have to touch a sign in button, and then follow several steps (i.e. selecting account, giving permission to access profile information, and possibly needing to create a Google+ account). With Google Play services 8.3, only one tap is needed for basic profile access.
You can check out the documentation for the new API here.
And to make signing in easier across devices, whether you use Google Sign-In or still have password-based authentication, the Smart Lock APIs received some important updates. We’ve added a new API method to show a dialog that helps your user select a previously-used email address to pre-fill sign in or up forms easily: check out getHintPicker (sample code). This doesn’t require any device permissions and provides an alternative to a picker you may have previously populated from accounts on the device, which would now require a runtime permission with Marshmallow.
getHintPicker
You can use this hint information to populate an entire sign-up form with name, email address, and profile picture with one tap, or even direct the user into a sign-in or sign-up flow intelligently based on their email address. Better yet, if the entry the user picked matches an account on the device, Google can provide a verified email address in the hint, which you can use to skip email verification and authenticate the user if your system can support ID tokens, similar to Google Sign-In.
For determining location, Google Play services provides a Fused Location Provider (FLP) which abstracts the underlying location sensors, such as GPS, WiFi, and the cell radio signal, into a single easy-to-use API. We’ve made some improvements to the FLP when it comes to batching. Prior to version 8.3, the batch location APIs would allow the FLP to save power by consolidating network traffic, but when an app removed a batching location request, the batch would be cleared. You may not want this behavior, so we’ve added an API that can return any batched locations immediately. Check the flushLocations and removeLocationUpdates method calls on the FusedLocationProviderApi for more details.
flushLocations
removeLocationUpdates
FusedLocationProviderApi
App Invites is a technology that enables your users to share your app with people they know. If you build using App Invites, Google Play services 8.3 has an update that will make coding much simpler. Now, you can use the AppInvite.AppInviteApi.getInvitation() method. This will set up a ResultCallback that you can use to launch your deep link activity, drastically simplifying your code.
AppInvite.AppInviteApi.getInvitation()
The Play game services Player Stats API also gets an update. The latest version now includes a new signal for the probability that a player is about to churn. Developers can use this signal to offer special promotions to improve retention. For example, a developer could provide a discount on a power-up for players that are at risk of churning.
Finally, if you are developing for wearables, you’ll know that battery life and optimization of power usage are critical in having a great user experience. With Google Play services 8.3, we’ve updated the DataApi to allow for urgency in how data items are synced. Now, a priority can be added to the data item to determine when it should be synced. For example, if you are building an app that requires immediate syncing, such as a remote control app, it can still be done immediately by calling setUrgent(), but for something such as updating your contacts, you could tolerate some delay. Non-urgent DataItems may be delayed for up to 30 minutes, but you can expect that in most cases they will be delivered within a few minutes. Low priority is now the default, so setUrgent() is needed to obtain the previous timing.
Filter support has been added to listeners in the Android Wear API, allowing listeners to only receive a subset of changes on both phones and watches. Listeners registered in the Android manifest should be filtered to only receive events that require launching the process, with the remaining events being delivered to live listeners added via methods such as addListener(). This reduces the need for listeners to filter out uninteresting events, making applications and the system more efficient.
That’s it for this release of Google Play services. To learn more, visit the Google Developers site.
Founded in 2010, Turkish mobile games developer Peak Games started developing games targeted to the local market and is now scaling globally. Their game ‘Spades Plus’ is growing in the US and the game generates over 70% of its mobile revenue from Android.
Watch Erdem İnan, Business Intelligence and Marketing Director, and İlkin Ulaş Balkanay, Head of Android Development, explain how Peak Games improved user engagement and increased installs with Google Play Store Listing experiments and app promotion right from within the Developer Console.
Find out more about how to use run tests on your Store Listing to increase your installs and how to promote your app or game with Universal App Campaigns from the Google Play Developer Console.
Posted by Larry Yang, Product Manager, Project Tango
Over the past year, we put Project Tango Tablet Development Kits in the hands of thousands of developers and challenged them to create unique augmented reality (AR) experiences that allowed users to explore their physical space. With your creativity, enthusiasm and investment, the ecosystem has grown substantially with hundreds of fun and useful Project Tango-enabled apps already available on Google Play.
Today, we’re excited to announce the winners of the Project Tango App Contest. An extremely competitive contest that started with 190 original submissions, the three category winners were selected from our expert panel of judges and received a cash prize of $4,096 each, while the developer community voted for the “Best Overall” app for the grand prize of $8,192.
Category: “Best Overall”
WeR Cubed Tango by WeR VR: In WeR Cubed, players utilize the motion tracking capabilities of the Project Tango to make their way through several challenging levels of 3D puzzles.
Ghostly Mansion by Cyron Software: Upon your death, you became a ghost, your spirit imprisoned inside the many rooms of your mansion. To finally be at peace, you must unravel the mystery of your death, using your “Ghostly Will” and the Project Tango device to find the necessary clues.
Phi3D by DotProduct LLC: Phi.3D for Tango lets you capture dense 3D models in real-time from your mobile device. It also offers professional features such as global scene optimization, precise measurements, setting coordinate systems, appending to existing data etc.
InnAR Wars by FLARB: Two players battle for domination over an asteroid field scattered with uninhabited planetoids. Walk around your room hunting for the opponent's bases and send attack ships to destroy them.
We hope these applications inspire you to build amazing apps that leverage Project Tango's core technologies: motion tracking, area learning, and depth perception.
In the coming weeks, we will also offer a 50 percent limited-time discount on a single Project Tango Tablet Development Kit sold on the Google Store. Keep an eye out on our Google+ community for an update on the sale.
Sign-up for our monthly newsletter to keep up with the latest news. Get help from other developers by using the Project Tango tag in Stack Overflow. See what others are creating on our YouTube channel. And share your story on Twitter with #ProjectTango.
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