Android Developers Blog: dicembre 2016

Introducing the ExifInterface Support Library

21 dicembre 2016

Posted by Ian Lake, Developer Advocate With the release of the 25.1.0 Support Library, there's a new entry in the family: the ExifInterface Support Library. With significant improvements introduced in Android 7.1 to the framework's ExifInterface, it only made sense to make those available to all API 9+ devices via the Support Library's ExifInterface. The basics are still the same: the ability to read and write Exif tags embedded within image files: now with 140 different attributes (almost 100 of them new to Android 7.1/this Support Library!) including information about the camera itself, the camera settings, orientation, and GPS coordinates. Camera Apps: Writing Exif AttributesFor Camera apps, the writing is probably the most important - writing attributes is still limited to JPEG image files. Now, normally you wouldn't need to use this during the actual camera capturing itself - you'd instead be calling the Camera2 API CaptureRequest.Builder.set() with JPEG_ORIENTATION, JPEG_GPS_LOCATION or the equivalents in the Camera1 Camera.Parameters. However, using ExifInterface allows you to make changes to the file after the fact (say, removing the location information on the user's request). Reading Exif AttributesFor the rest of us though, reading those attributes is going to be our bread-and-butter; this is where we see the biggest improvements. Firstly, you can read Exif data from JPEG and raw images (specifically, DNG, CR2, NEF, NRW, ARW, RW2, ORF, PEF, SRW and RAF files). Under the hood, this was a major restructuring, removing all native dependencies and building an extensive test suite to ensure that everything actually works. For apps that receive images from other apps with a content:// URI (such as those sent by apps that target API 24 or higher), ExifInterface now works directly off of an InputStream; this allows you to easily extract Exif information directly out of content:// URIs you receive without having to create a temporary file. Uri uri; // the URI you've received from the other app InputStream in; try { in = getContentResolver().openInputStream(uri); ExifInterface exifInterface = new ExifInterface(in); // Now you can extract any Exif tag you want // Assuming the image is a JPEG or supported raw format } catch (IOException e) { // Handle any errors } finally { if (in != null) { try { in.close(); } catch (IOException ignored) {} } } Note: ExifInterface will not work with remote InputStreams, such as those returned from a HttpURLConnection. It is strongly recommended to only use them with content:// or file:// URIs. For most attributes, you'd simply use the getAttributeInt(), getAttributeDouble(), or getAttribute() (for Strings) methods as appropriate. One of the most important attributes when it comes to displaying images is the image orientation, stored in the aptly-named TAG_ORIENTATION, which returns one of the ORIENTATION_ constants. To convert this to a rotation angle, you can post-process the value. int rotation = 0; int orientation = exifInterface.getAttributeInt( ExifInterface.TAG_ORIENTATION, ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_NORMAL); switch (orientation) { case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_90: rotation = 90; break; case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_180: rotation = 180; break; case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_270: rotation = 270; break; } There are some helper methods to extract values from specific Exif tags. For location data, the getLatLong() method gives you the latitude and longitude as floats and getAltitude() will give you the altitude in meters. Some images also embed a small thumbnail. You can check for its existence with hasThumbnail() and then extract the byte[] representation of the thumbnail with getThumbnail() - perfect to pass to BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(). Working with Exif: Everything is optionalOne thing that is important to understand with Exif data is that there are no required tags: each and every tag is optional - some services even specifically strip Exif data. Therefore throughout your code, you should always handle cases where there is no Exif data, either due to no data for a specific attribute or an image format that doesn't support Exif data at all (say, the ubiquitous PNGs or WebP images). Add the ExifInterface Support Library to your project with the following dependency: compile "com.android.support:exifinterface:25.1.0"But when an Exif attribute is exactly what you need to prevent a mis-rotated image in your app, the ExifInterface Support Library is just what you need to #BuildBetterApps

Get the guide to finding success in new markets on Google Play

20 dicembre 2016

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play

With just a few clicks, you can publish an app to Google Play and access a global audience of more than 1 billion 30 days active users. Finding success in global markets means considering how each market differs, planning for high quality localization, and tailoring your activity to the local audience. The new Going Global Playbook provides best practices and tips, with advice from developers who've successfully gone global.

This guide includes advice to help you plan your approach to going global, prepare your app for new markets, take your app to market, and also include data and insights for key countries and other useful resources.

This ebook joins others that we've recently published including The Building for Billions Playbook and The News Publisher Playbook. All of our ebooks are promoted in the Playbook for Developers app, which is where you can stay up to date with all the news and best practices you need to find success on Google Play.

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Start building Actions on Google

20 dicembre 2016

Posted by Jason Douglas, PM Director for Actions on Google The Google Assistant brings together all of the technology and smarts we've been building for years, from the Knowledge Graph to Natural Language Processing. To be a truly successful Assistant, it should be able to connect users across the apps and services in their lives. This makes enabling an ecosystem where developers can bring diverse and unique services to users through the Google Assistant really important. In October, we previewed Actions on Google, the developer platform for the Google Assistant. Actions on Google further enhances the Assistant user experience by enabling you to bring your services to the Assistant. Starting today, you can build Conversation Actions for Google Home and request to become an early access partner for upcoming platform features. Conversation Actions for Google Home Conversation Actions let you engage your users to deliver information, services, and assistance. And the best part? It really is a conversation -- users won't need to enable a skill or install an app, they can just ask to talk to your action. For now, we've provided two developer samples of what's possible, just say "Ok Google, talk to Number Genie " or try "Ok Google, talk to Eliza' for the classic 1960s AI exercise.

You can get started today by visiting the Actions on Google website for developers. To help create a smooth, straightforward development experience, we worked with a number of development partners, including conversational interaction development tools API.AI and Gupshup, analytics tools DashBot and VoiceLabs and consulting companies such as Assist, Notify.IO, Witlingo and Spoken Layer. We also created a collection of samples and voice user interface (VUI) resources or you can check out the integrations from our early access partners as they roll out over the coming weeks. Introduction to Conversation Actions by Wayne Piekarski Coming soon: Actions for Pixel and Allo + Support for Purchases and Bookings Today is just the start, and we're excited to see what you build for the Google Assistant. We'll continue to add more platform capabilities over time, including the ability to make your integrations available across the various Assistant surfaces like Pixel phones and Google Allo. We'll also enable support for purchases and bookings as well as deeper Assistant integrations across verticals. Developers who are interested in creating actions using these upcoming features should register for our early access partner program and help shape the future of the platform. newsletterGoogle+ communityStackOverflow

Best practices to improve app engagement

19 dicembre 2016

Posted by Niko Schröer, Business Development, Google Play

Driving installs is important to growing a user base, but it's not much use if your app sits on users' devices and is rarely opened. In a competitive app landscape, it's increasingly important to engage and retain users over the long term to build a successful business. Users who are using your app more will have a higher lifetime value and be more likely to share your app. Watch my Playtime session below to hear about the tools and features other developers are using to increase app engagement. You can also read the summary of my main tips below.

1. Build a high quality app to engage Android users
Building a high quality app is the foundation of a great user experience on Android. The better your app's user experience is, the more engaged your users will be. Optimizing for material design, for example, can significantly improve user engagement as well as building for Android Wear, Auto or TV where it makes sense based on your value proposition.

To achieve high quality, we recommend you to check out the latest Android features, tips, and best practices in our Playbook for Developers.

The developer of the golf app, Hole19, tailored their app's user experience thoughtfully for Android Wear and, as a result, saw a 40% increase in user engagement compared to non-Wear users. Watch a video about Hole19's success.

2. Make your users feel at home
Personalising your app experience to make users feel at home is a good way to start a long lasting relationship. Onboarding new users is a crucial step in this process. Onboarding should be fast and seamless and ask for minimal user input - after all users want to start using your app as quickly as possible. Furthermore, the onboarding should be a core part of the overall product experience. Use images and wording that's true to your brand and only ask for user input when it's actually needed, to reduce friction and avoid losing users.

Freeletics, a fitness app, created an engaging user onboarding flow in which they tailored imagery and text to male and female users respectively. They also moved the registration process to a later stage in the funnel to reduce friction. The improved onboarding flow increased user activity by 58% within the first 7 days. They also implemented Google Smart Lock to seamlessly sign-in returning users.

3. Optimize feature releases as a way to increase user engagement
Introducing new features is essential to staying ahead of competition and relevant to your users to ensure they keep coming back to your app. To make new feature launches successful drivers for user engagement, follow these simple steps:

Define a clear objective for each release to measure your impact, e.g. increase number of users who edit a photo by at least 10%.
Use beta testing to gather user feedback and iterate a feature before it's rolled out to all of your users.
Enable the pre-launch report in the Play developer console to spot potential flaws and ensure technical stability in your alpha and beta apps.
Guide users to each new feature as if it is a light onboarding experience. Visually highlight what's new and provide a short explanation why users should care.
Measure performance with analytics to see if the new feature drives engagement (that you've defined as your objective).

4. Use notifications wisely
Push notifications are a popular engagement tool and rightfully so. However, there is a fine line between driving engagement and annoying users (who might then uninstall your app). Follow these guidelines to ensure your notifications are on the right side of the line:

Be relevant and only send messages that matter to the user in context. Be creative and true to your brand, speak your users language and use an authentic tone.
Make notifications actionable for your users and don't forget to deep link to content where applicable to save your users time.
Remember that not all your users are equal so personalize your message to different user cohorts with Firebase Notifications.
Consider timeliness of your messages to get users the right notification at the right time and with the right frequency. For example, it might be better to send a notification about something interesting to read at a time when the user normally gets out their phone – like during their commute – instead of the middle of the day, when they might be busy and dismiss a new notification.
Finally, give users control over what notifications they receive so that they can opt-in and opt-out of the notifications they like and don't like respectively. If users get annoyed about certain types of notifications and don't have a way to disable them, they might uninstall your app.

The Norwegian news app Aftenposten implemented a new onboarding flow that clarified which notifications were available, allowing readers to manage their preferences. This reduced uninstalls by 9.2.% over 60 days and led to a 28% decrease in the number of users muting notifications completely. Read more about Aftenposten's success.

5. Reward your most engaged users
Last but not least, you should find ways to reward your most loyal users to retain them over time and to make it desirable to less engaged users to engage more. These rewards can come in many shapes and forms. Start by keeping it simple and make sure the reward adds real value to the user and fits in your app's ecosystem. You can do this by:

Giving sneak peeks of new features by inviting them to a beta group.
Decorating user accounts with badges based on their behaviour.
Offer app exclusive discounts or promo codes that can only be redeemed in your app.

Generally, the more you can personalize the reward the better it will work.

Find success with ongoing experimentation
A great Android app gives developers a unique opportunity to create a lasting relationship with users and build a sustainable business with happy customers. Therefore optimising apps to engage and retain your users by following these 5 tips should be front and centre of your development goals and company strategy. Find more tips and best practices by watching the sessions at this year's Playtime events.

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Games authentication adopting Google Sign-In API

16 dicembre 2016

Posted by Clayton Wilkinson, Developer Platform Engineer Some changes are coming to Play Game Services in early 2017: Changes to Google API Client building In November, we announced an update to Google Sign-In API. Play Game Services is being updated to use Google Sign-In API for authentication. The advantages are:

Games and Sign-In in same client connection.

Single API for getting Auth code to send to backend servers.

This change unifies the Google Sign-in and the Games API Sign-in, so there are updates to how to build the Google API Client: // Defaults to Games Lite scope, no server component GoogleSignInOptions gso = new GoogleSignInOptions.Builder(GoogleSignInOptions.DEFAULT_GAMES_SIGN_IN).build(); // OR for apps with a server component GoogleSignInOptions gso = new GoogleSignInOptions.Builder(GoogleSignInOptions.DEFAULT_GAMES_SIGN_IN) .requestServerAuthCode(SERVER_CLIENT_ID) .build(); // OR for developers who need real user Identity GoogleSignInOptions gso = new GoogleSignInOptions.Builder(GoogleSignInOptions.DEFAULT_GAMES_SIGN_IN) .requestEmail() .build(); // Build the api client. mApiClient = new GoogleApiClient.Builder(this) .addApi(Games.API) .addApi(Auth.GOOGLE_SIGN_IN_API, gso) .addConnectionCallbacks(this) .build(); } @Override public void onConnected(Bundle connectionHint) { if (mApiClient.hasConnectedApi(Games.API)) { Auth.GoogleSignInApi.silentSignIn(mApiClient).setResultCallback( new ResultCallback() { @Override public void onResult(GoogleSignInResult googleSignInResult) { // In this case, we are sure the result is a success. GoogleSignInAccount acct = googleSignInResult.getGoogleSignInAccount()); // For Games with a server, send the auth code to your server. String serverAuthCode = signInAccount.getServerAuthCode(); // Use the API client as normal. Player player = Games.API.getCurrentPlayer(mApiClient); } } ); } else { onSignedOut(); } }Account creation within iOS is no longer supported

Currently, there is no support for new players to create a Play Games account on iOS. Additionally, the Google+ integration has been removed from iOS. As a result "social" APIs will return result codes indicating success, but return empty lists. This includes the "standard" UIs for leaderboards and multiplayer invitations.

Google+ is no longer integrated

Announced last year, Games is decoupled from Google+ during this transition. As a result the public APIs for getting connected players via circles stopped working, but the standard UIs for multiplayer invitations and social leaderboards continued to work. Starting from February 2017, the standard UIs will also not display the Social graph results as Google+ data becomes inaccessible. This will affect multiplayer games, social leaderboards, and gifts API on Android. The effect will be that these APIs will return successfully, but with an empty list of players.

List of APIs that are deprecated by removing Google+ integration (and their C++ equivalents):

Games.Players.getPlayerSearchIntent()

Games.Players.loadConnectedPlayers()

Games.Players.loadInvitablePlayers()

The value LeaderboardVariant.COLLECTION_SOCIAL

Invitations.loadInvitations()

RealtimeMultiplayer.getSelectOpponentsIntent()

TurnBasedMultiplayer.getSelectOpponentsIntent()

All methods in the Requests package.

We realize this is a large change, but moving forward Play Game Services are much better aligned with the rest of the Mobile platform from Google and will lead to better developer experience for Android game developers.

Four tips for startup success from a Silicon Valley VC

16 dicembre 2016

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play

Working at Google Play, we’re on the front line watching developers build, polish, and launch their dreams for millions of users to experience. While it’s exciting to be a part of so much creativity, we’re often asked how small startups can stand out in such a competitive field. We recently had Josh Elman & Sarah Tavel of Greylock Partners speak at our events, sharing their experiences working in Product Marketing and Engineering at major tech companies including Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Below are four tips to hit the ground running and create a business built for success.

Set goals, both large and small

Every startup has an ultimate goal, but don’t forget to create micro-goals. Breaking your larger goal down into smaller milestones creates checkpoints to review progress and ensure momentum is heading in the right direction. This also allows for flexibility if teams need to course correct along the way, not to mention micro-accomplishments to celebrate!

Create stickiness

The first level in Sarah’s Hierarchy of Engagement is to identify the core action for users to perform in your app. Once you have engagement with this core action, level 2 is driving retention, getting users to come back and perform the core action more and more. The ultimate goal is to hook users with your app creating accruing benefits, whereby deeper and more frequent engagement creates habits and product dependencies.

“As companies move up the hierarchy, their products become better, harder to leave, and ultimately create virtuous loops that make the product self-perpetuating,” – Sarah Tavel, Partner at Greylock

Example: For those looking to improve on organizational skills, Evernote can be a lifesaver. The more lists users create, the more they rely on the product. Evernote becomes such an ingrained habit that it naturally transcends between personal and professional worlds.

Drive virality

When launching a new app, look for ways to achieve virality. Find hooks to make users fall in love with your app and strive to make it part of their regular habits. But watch out, not all types of virality are treated equally.

“Whenever you’re thinking about engineering virality, you need to be sure that you’re reaching the right people, getting them interested for reasons that align with the intrinsic value of your product, and leading them to the right actions,” – Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock Example: Whether you’re lucky enough to convert happy users into product evangelists or catch fire through social media, outbreak virality has driven tremendous success for apps like Pokémon GO and Prisma.

Measure cohorts

While monitoring traditional mobile metrics such as installs and DAUs provide a high level overview of app performance, cohort analysis is key to understanding user behavior and optimizing for growth. When rolling out changes in your app, make sure to track cohorts for an extended duration. Initial results may tell one story at D7, but hold tight, as things could turn a corner by D15 or even later. Give users time to adapt and get comfortable with the changes before making any final product decisions.

Read more tips on how to find success for your app or game start up in the Playbook for Developers app.

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Get a glimpse of Wear 2.0’s upcoming standalone apps

15 dicembre 2016

Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play

The upcoming Android Wear 2.0 experience will introduce standalone apps, expanding your potential reach to both Android and iOS audiences with Wear devices. Users will be able to search, install, and use apps without ever leaving their device. See how other developers are enhancing their user experience with standalone apps for messaging, travel & local, and health & fitness.

Glide

Having a watch app further simplifies video messaging with Glide. Using the Wear Complications API, Glide is now able to live broadcast directly from the watch face. By tapping contact shortcuts from the watch face, you can now launch directly into a conversation. This experience brings speed and intimacy to the world of messaging, making wrist-based communication more accessible and effortless.

Foursquare

Travelers around the world use Foursquare's Android Wear app to discover hidden gems and be in the know about the best places to eat, drink and explore. With their upcoming 2.0 app, the team has a clean new canvas for rich notifications giving users an immersive experience with Foursquare content.

"The standalone nature of the Android Wear 2.0 app will offer a big boost in search performance and app responsiveness so you spend less time staring at the screen and more time exploring the world around you," said Kyle Fowler, Software Engineer at Foursquare.

Lifesum

Lifesum helps users make better food choices, improve their exercise, and reach health goals. The upcoming 2.0 experience complements the existing Lifesum mobile app and as a standalone app, it will allow users to more easily track water and meals throughout the day.
"It's all about increasing access and being there for the user in a quick and simple way. We believe a simplified way of tracking meals and water will make it easier for our users on their journey of becoming healthier and happier," said Joakim Hammer, Android Developer at Lifesum

Check out g.co/wearpreview for the latest builds and documentation about the recently released Android Wear Developer Preview 4.

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Tips to be better found and discovered on Google Play

15 dicembre 2016

Posted by Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play

We're constantly working on ways to make Google Play a great place for users to discover apps and games they'll love. We know this is crucial to most developers ongoing success. There are steps you can take to ensure your app is primed for success – that's why we're sharing a reminder of some of our top tips for getting your app discovered on Google Play.

Build for quality

First, build for quality. Android users expect high-quality apps. App quality directly influences the long-term success of your app - in terms of installs, user rating and reviews, engagement, and user retention. These are some of the factors that go into our search and discovery systems that help discern what apps to recommend and surface across our Google Play experiences. When building your app, check against the quality criteria, and use what you need from the material design guidelines to make sure you are delivering a highly usable experience. Also, be sure to test your app for functional quality. Opt-in to the pre-launch report for your alpha and beta apps in the Google Play Developer Console and you'll receive a report for each APK showing how it performs on real devices. This will help you identify crashes and other issues before you release your app.

Example: Designing for high usability through Google Material Design.
Request only the permissions you need

Second, be considerate on which permission settings to enable for your app. We see that there are some apps that ask for very sensitive permissions, even when the app doesn't use them. (For example, a camera app asking for read and write permissions to call logs.) Excessive app permissions may dissuade users from installing your app. In fact, one study, in which users were shown two unbranded apps with similar ratings that had the same functionality but different sets of permission requests, showed that users were, on average, 3 times more likely to install the app with fewer permissions requests. And a similar study showed that users are 1.7 times more likely, on average, to select the application with fewer permission requests. The rule of thumb is to enable permissions that are only essential to your app. Read the best practices for app permissions.

Chart: Distribution of permission groups use across Arcade Games category.If you're building an arcade game, you many only need a very few permission settings, if any.
Listen and respond to your users

Lastly, be attentive to user feedback. It's ultimately the users who drive our search and discovery systems. When you hear user feedback about bugs or other issues, we recommend engaging with the feedback and, if needed, updating your app in a timely manner. Having an up-to-date app that reflects your user's feedback can help you gain more installs, engagement, and higher ratings. Beta testing is a good way to get feedback from real users before launch. You can also check the ratings and reviews section of the Developer Console to see an analysis of what users are saying about your app and how that is affecting your rating compared to similar apps.

Review benchmarks in the Developer Console uses machine learning to give you insights about what users are saying about your app and how it affects your rating.

Google Play strives to help users find and discover the most safe, high quality, useful, and relevant apps. Building apps that put user's interest first will help you be successful in Google Play. For more tips and best practices for building a successful app business on Google Play, get the Playbook for Developers app.

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Android Wear 2.0 for China - Developer Preview

13 dicembre 2016

Posted by Hoi Lam, Developer Advocate

Today at Google Developer Day China, we are happy to announce a developer preview of Android Wear 2.0 for developers creating apps for China. Android Wear 2.0 is the biggest update since our partners launched their first devices in China last year. We're making a Developer Preview available today and plan to release additional updates in the coming months. Please send us your feedback by filing bugs or posting in our Android Wear Developers community. Developing for the Chinese Market With Android Wear 2.0, apps can access the internet directly on Android Wear devices. As a result, for the majority of apps, having a companion phone application is no longer necessary. This means that most developers creating apps for Android Wear 2.0 may no longer need to import the Google Play services library. There are two situations where developers will need to import Google Play services for China:

Apps that require direct interaction with the paired mobile device - some experiences require Android Wear to connect directly to a paired phone. In this case, the Data Layer API introduced in Android Wear 1.0 will continue to function.

New FusedLocationProvider for China - we have added location detection to the SDK for Chinese developers. With the user's permission, your app can receive location updates via the FusedLocationProvider.

You can find more details about how to import the China compatible version of Google Play services library here. Product testing for Android Wear 2.0 for China The Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with tools, and system images for testing using the Huawei Watch. To get started, follow these steps:

Update to Android Studio v2.1.1 or later

Visit the Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview site for downloads and documentation

Download the device system images

Test your app with your supported device

Give us feedback We will update this developer preview over the next few months based on your feedback. The sooner we hear from you, the more we can include in the final release, so don't be shy! Android Wear 2.0 中国版 - 开发者预览版编辑: 林海泉, Android Wear 开发平台负责人今天在上海举办的Google 开发者大会上，我们正式宣布了一款专门针对中国市场的Android Wear 2.0 开发者预览版。Android Wear 2.0系统，将是自我们的合作伙伴首次发布手表产品以来最重大的更新。开发者预览版已于今日正式上线。与此同时，我们也计划在未来的几个月内持续进行更新。请您将您遇到的问题在此提交反馈，或者在我们的Android Wear开发者论坛发表意见。为中国市场开发应用在Android Wear 2.0系统中，应用可以由Android Wear手表直接连接至互联网。因此，对于大多数应用来说，手机端的伴侣应用也就变得不再必要。这也意味着，多数为Android Wear 2.0开发应用的开发者将不再需要引用Google Play services客户端库。目前，在两个情况下开发者仍然需要引入Google Play Services客户端库来为中国市场开发应用：

需要与手机直接进行通信的应用 - 有一些用例需要Android Wear手表与已配对手机直接连接。在这种情况下，Android Wear 1.0中引入的Data Layer API仍然可以继续使用。

使用 FusedLocationProvider - 我们在最新的中国版SDK中加入了定位的支持。在用户的许可下，您的应用可以通过FusedLocationProvider来接收定位更新。

您可以在这里找到关于如何引入与中国版兼容的Google Play service的更多信息。 Android Wear 2.0 中国版产品测试 Android Wear 2.0 开发者预览版包括最新的SDK套件，手表测试系统镜像（基于华为手表）。情按照以下步骤进行测试：

更新到Android Studio至v2.1.1以上版本

访问 Android Wear 2.0 开发者预览版，那里的文件下载与文档下载部分

下载手表系统镜像

在手表上测试您的应用

开发反馈我们会根据您的反馈在未来的几个月中更新开发者预览版。您给我们的反馈越早，我们将会在最终的发布版本中包含更多针对您的反馈的解决方案。敬请期待！

Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 4: Authentication, In-App Billing, and more

13 dicembre 2016

Posted by Hoi Lam, Developer Advocate

A key part of Android Wear 2.0 is letting watch apps work as standalone apps, so users can respond to messages, track their fitness, and use their favorite apps, even when their phone isn't around. Developer Preview 4 includes a number of new APIs that will help you build more powerful standalone apps. Seamless authentication To make authentication a seamless experience for both Android phone and iPhone users, we have created new APIs for OAuth and added support for one-click Google Sign-in. With the OAuth API for Android Wear, users can tap a button on the watch that opens an authentication screen on the phone. Your watch app can then authenticate with your server side APIs directly. With Google Sign-In, it's even easier. All the user needs to do is select which account they want to authenticate with and they are done. In-app billing In addition to paid apps, we have added in-app billing support, to give you another way to monetize your Android Wear app or watch face. Users can authorize purchases quickly and easily on the watch through a 4-digit Google Account PIN. Whether it's new levels in a game or new styles on a watch face, if you can build it, users can buy it. Cross-device promotion What if your watch app doesn't work standalone? Or what if it offers a better user experience when both the watch and phone apps are installed? We've been listening carefully to your feedback, and we've added two new APIs (PlayStoreAvailability and RemoteIntent) to help you navigate users to the Play Store on a paired device so they can more easily install your app. Developers can also open custom URLs on the phone from the watch via the new RemoteIntent API; no phone app or data layer is required. // Check Play Store is available int playStoreAvailabilityOnPhone = PlayStoreAvailability.getPlayStoreAvailabilityOnPhone(getApplicationContext()); if (playStoreAvailabilityOnPhone == PlayStoreAvailability.PLAY_STORE_ON_PHONE_AVAILABLE) { // To launch a web URL, setData to Uri.parse("https://g.co/wearpreview") Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW) .addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_BROWSABLE) .setData(Uri.parse("market://details?id=com.google.android.wearable.app")); // mResultReceiver is optional; it can be null. RemoteIntent.startRemoteActivity(this, intent, mResultReceiver); }Swipe-to-dismiss is back Many of you have given us the feedback that the swipe-to-dismiss gesture from Android Wear 1.0 is an intuitive time-saver. We agree, and have reverted back to the previous behavior with this developer preview release. To support swipe-to-dismiss in this release, we've made the following platform and API changes:

Activities now automatically support swipe-to-dismiss. Swiping an activity from left to right will result in it being dismissed and the app will navigate down the back stack.

New Fragment and View support. Developers can wrap the containing views of a Fragment or Views in general in the new SwipeDismissFrameLayout to implement custom actions such as going down the back stack when the user swipes rather than exiting the activity.

Hardware button now maps to "power" instead of "back" which means it can no longer be intercepted by apps.

Additional details are available under the behavior changes section of the Android Wear Preview site. Compatibility with Android Wear 1.0 apps Android Wear apps packaged using the legacy embedded app mechanism can now be delivered to Android Wear 2.0 watches. When a user installs a phone app that also contains an embedded Android Wear app, the user will be prompted to install the embedded app via a notification. If they choose not to install the embedded app at that moment, they can find it in the Play Store on Android Wear under a special section called "Apps you've used". Despite support for the existing mechanism, there are significant benefits for apps that transition to the multi-APK delivery mechanism. Multi-APK allows the app to be searchable in the Play Store on Android Wear, to be eligible for merchandising on the homepage, and to be remotely installed from the web to the watch. As a result, we strongly recommend that developers move to multi-APK. More additions in Developer Preview 4

Action and Navigation Drawers: An enhancement to peeking behavior allows the user to take action without scrolling all the way to the top or bottom of a list. Developers can further fine-tune drawer peeking behavior through new APIs, such as setShouldPeekOnScrollDown for the action drawer.

WearableRecyclerView: The curved layout is now opt-in, and with this, the WearableRecyclerView is now a drop-in replacement for RecyclerView.

Burn-in protection icon for complications: Complication data providers can now provide icons for use on screens susceptible to burn-in. These burn-in-safe icons are normally the outline of the icon in interactive mode. Previously, watch faces may have chosen not to display the icon at all in ambient mode to prevent screen burn-in.

Feedback welcome! Thanks for all your terrific feedback on Android Wear 2.0. Check out g.co/wearpreview for the latest builds and documentation, keep the feedback coming by filing bugs or posting in our Android Wear Developers community, and stay tuned for Android Wear Developer Preview 5!

Announcing updates to Google’s Internet of Things platform: Android Things and Weave

13 dicembre 2016

Posted by Wayne Piekarski, Developer Advocate for IoT The Internet of Things (IoT) will bring computing to a whole new range of devices. Today we're announcing two important updates to our IoT developer platform to make it faster and easier for you to create these smart, connected products. We're releasing a Developer Preview of Android Things, a comprehensive way to build IoT products with the power of Android, one of the world's most supported operating systems. Now any Android developer can quickly build a smart device using Android APIs and Google services, while staying highly secure with updates direct from Google. We incorporated the feedback from Project Brillo to include familiar tools such as Android Studio, the Android Software Development Kit (SDK), Google Play Services, and Google Cloud Platform. And in the coming months, we will provide Developer Preview updates to bring you the infrastructure for securely pushing regular OS patches, security fixes, and your own updates, as well as built-in Weave connectivity and more. There are several turnkey hardware solutions available for you to get started building real products with Android Things today, including Intel Edison, NXP Pico, and Raspberry Pi 3. You can easily scale to large production runs with custom designs of these solutions, while continuing to use the same Board Support Package (BSP) from Google. We are also updating the Weave platform to make it easier for all types of devices to connect to the cloud and interact with services like the Google Assistant. Device makers like Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings already use Weave, and several others like Belkin WeMo, LiFX, Honeywell, Wink, TP-Link, and First Alert are implementing it. Weave provides all the cloud infrastructure, so that developers can focus on building their products without investing in cloud services. Weave also includes a Device SDK for supported microcontrollers and a management console. The Weave Device SDK currently supports schemas for light bulbs, smart plugs and switches, and thermostats. In the coming months we will be adding support for additional device types, custom schemas/traits, and a mobile application API for Android and iOS. Finally, we're also working towards merging Weave and Nest Weave to enable all classes of devices to connect with each other in a secure and reliable way. So whether you started with Google Weave or Nest Weave, there is a path forward in the ecosystem.

This is just the beginning of the IoT ecosystem we want to build with you. To get started, check out Google's IoT developer site, or go directly to the Android Things, Weave, and Google Cloud Platform sites for documentation and code samples. You can also join Google's IoT Developers Community on Google+ to get the latest updates and share and discuss ideas with other developers.

Five steps to achieve sustainable growth and boost your app's long term success

12 dicembre 2016

Maxim Mai, Business Development Manager, Google Play

Maintaining sustainable growth is difficult for even the highest quality apps. In this video and through the 5 steps below you can find out how some of our leading Android developers are tackling growth.

1) Understand and define your app's objectives

Depending on your product lifecycle stage you will most likely focus on these 3 growth goals with varying intensity:

Acquire new users
Increase engagement and retention
Grow revenue

2) Track and measure your tactics against each of your objectives

List out the tactics you're using to achieve each objective and keep track of their performance. You can visualize it using a scorecard like in the example below created by Mobile Growth Stack.

3) Apply your growth tactics.

Here are a few examples of specific tactics developers have successfully used to drive sustained growth.
Tactic: Clue, a female health app, invests in the Play store listing to increase conversions.
Results: 24% aggregate increase in install conversion rate over a period of 6 months.

How they did it:

Built a continuous flow of global and localised store listing experiments.
Monitored changes in the user acquisition performance report for target countries and channels.
Gathered insights from what users are saying from the reviews analysis.

Which phone screenshot do you think drove increase in install conversion for Clue?

Tactic: ShareTheMeal, a non-profit app developed by the World Food Programme, uses public relations as a free sustainable acquisition channel.

Results: 50% of their total installs to date were driven by media coverage.

How they did it:

Developed an excellent messaging.
Boosted installs impact by combining PR with celebrity outreach and distribution partnership.
Learned that TV coverage has the highest impact on installs but print is a useful door opener to amplify TV coverage.

Tactic: Viral growth. Virality is a core growth tool for apps and games that focus on sharing and usually the mechanic is built into the core user experience of the product. However, even if sharing isn't a key component of your app, you can still influence two key variables to create an appropriate environment to encourage virality.

How to do it:

Increase the number of additional users that a single user brings to the app, by boosting the number of invitations sent.
Decrease your "cycle time", how long it takes between inviting a user and that user sending out the next round of invitations to their friends.
Offer more incentives for users to share the app or its content while they're using it will help shorten the cycle time and kickstart viral growth!

Tactic: Freeletics Nutrition, an app to adjust your nutrition to your individual needs and goals, uses cross-promotion to accelerate the launch of a new product.

Results: 96% of new Nutrition app sales generated by users who originally registered for the developer's Bodyweight training app.

How they did it:

Surface meal advice in the Bodyweight app's activity feed with the goal of raising awareness for the approaching launch of their new Freeletics Nutrition app.

4) Build a strong growth culture

To make sustainable growth work for your app, it needs to be a part of your culture. Runtastic is one of the leading health and fitness app developers in Europe and 95% of their approximately 76M total app installs on Google Play have been generated organically. Mario Aichlseder, VP of Growth, believes this is the result of a strong growth culture and the growth principles according to which all teams operate. For example, product managers, designers and engineers at Runtastic deliberately chose a mixture of qualitative and quantitative feedback loops during the app development process to ensure they stay true to their growth principles.

5) Adjust along the way

It's important to track your tactics against real metrics to measure your impact. That will help you make decisions about where to increase or decrease your efforts. Your priorities will also change based on the evolution of your business and product lifecycle as well as due to external factors such as new techniques becoming available, so be open to regularly adjusting your tactics.
Get more tips and best practices in the sessions from this year's Playtime events.

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