The latest Android and Google Play news for app and game developers.
Posted by Ben Murdoch, Software Engineer and Michael Wright, Android Framework Engineer
The screen on a mobile device is critical to the user experience. The improved Adaptive Brightness feature in Android P automatically manages the display to match your preferences for brightness level so you get the best experience, whatever the current lighting environment.
Screen brightness in Android is managed via Quick Settings or via the settings app
(Settings → Display → Brightness Level).
In Android Pie, Adaptive Brightness is enabled by default (Settings → Display → Adaptive Brightness).
While enabled, Android automatically selects a screen brightness that's suitable for the user's current ambient light conditions. Prior to Android Pie, the brightness slider didn't represent an absolute screen brightness level, but a global adjustment factor for boosting or reducing the device manufacturer's preset screen brightness curve across all ambient light levels: * Setting the slider to center resulted in the device using the preset.
* Setting the slider to the left of center applied a negative scale factor, making the screen dimmer than the preset.
* Setting the slider to the right of center applied a positive scale factor, making the screen brighter than the preset. So, under low ambient light conditions, you might prefer a brighter screen than the preset level and move the brightness slider up accordingly. But, because that adjustment would boost the brightness at all ambient light levels, you might find yourself needing to move the brightness slider back down in brighter ambient light. And so on, back and forth.
To improve this experience, we've introduced two important changes to screen brightness in Android Pie:
The slider control now represents absolute screen brightness rather than the global adjustment factor. That means that you may see it move on its own while Adaptive Brightness is on. This is expected behavior!
Humans perceive brightness on a logarithmic rather than linear scale1. That means changes in screen brightness are much more noticeable when the screen is dark versus bright. To match this difference in perception, we updated the brightness slider UI in the notification shade and System Settings app to work on a more human-like scale. This means you may need to move the slider farther to the right than you did on previous versions of Android for the same absolute screen brightness, and that when setting a dark screen brightness you have more precise control over exactly which brightness to set.
Prior to Android P, when developing a new Android device the device manufacturer would determine a baseline mapping from ambient brightness to screen brightness based on the display manufacturer's recommendation and a bit of experimentation. All users of that device would receive the same baseline mapping and, while using the device, move the brightness slider around to set their global adjustment factor. To determine the final screen brightness, the system would first look at the room brightness and the baseline mapping to find the default screen brightness for that situation, and then apply the global adjustment factor.
What we found is that in many cases this global adjustment factor didn't adequately capture personal preferences - that is, users tended to change the slider often for new lighting environments.
For Android Pie we worked with researchers from DeepMind to build a machine learning model that will observe the interactions that a user makes with the screen brightness slider, and train on-device to personalise the mapping of ambient light level to screen brightness.
This means that Android will learn what screen brightness is comfortable for a user in a given lighting environment. The user teaches it by manually adjusting the slider, and, as the software trains over time, the user should need to make fewer manual adjustments. In testing the feature, we've observed that after a week almost half our test users are making fewer manual adjustments while the total number of slider interactions across all internal test users was reduced by over 10%. The model that we've developed is updatable and will be tuned based on real world usage now that Android Pie has been released. This means that the model will continue to get better over time.
We believe that screen brightness is one of those things that should just work, and these changes in Android Pie are a step towards realizing that. For the best performance no matter where you are models run directly on the device rather than the cloud, and train overnight while the device charges.
The improved Adaptive Brightness feature is now available on Pixel devices and we are working with our OEM partners now to incorporate Adaptive Brightness into Android Pie builds for their devices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law#Vision ↩
Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team
Inovidea Magna Global, is the developer of PicMix, a photo and video editing app, which has now evolved into an interest based social media platform powered by content discovery and social commerce. It has 27 million users worldwide, 65% of which are outside of its home market in Indonesia.
Hear Calvin Kizana, CEO, and Sandy Colondam, Co-founder, explain how they used Google Play tools, such as Store Listing Experiments and Material Design, to create a high quality app which appeals to a global audience.
Learn more about store listing experiments and find out how to get started with Material Design. Also, get the Playbook for Developers app and stay up-to-date with more features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.
Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team
Today we are happy to announce that the App Translation Service, previewed in May at Google I/O, is now available to all developers. Every day, more than 1.5 million new Android phones and tablets around the world are turned on for the first time. Each newly activated Android device is an opportunity for you as a developer to gain a new user, but frequently, that user speaks a different language from you.
To help developers reach users in other languages, we launched the App Translation Service, which allows developers to purchase professional app translations through the Google Play Developer Console. This is part of a toolbox of localization features you can (and should!) take advantage of as you distribute your app around the world through Google Play.
We were happy to see that many developers expressed interest in the App Translation Service pilot program, and it has been well received by those who have participated so far, with many repeat customers.
Here are several examples from developers who participated in the App Translation Service pilot program: the developers of Zombie Ragdoll used this tool to launch their new game simultaneously in 20 languages in August 2013. When they combined app translation with local marketing campaigns, they found that 80% of their installs came from non-English-language users. Dating app SayHi Chat expanded into 13 additional languages using the App Translation Service. They saw 120% install growth in localized markets and improved user reviews of the professionally translated UI. The developer of card game G4A Indian Rummy found that the App Translation Service was easier to use than their previous translation methods, and saw a 300% increase with user engagement in localized apps. You can read more about these developers’ experiences with the App Translation Service in Developer Stories: Localization in Google Play.
To use the App Translation Service, you’ll want to first read the localization checklist. You’ll need to get your APK ready for translation, and select the languages to target for translation. If you’re unsure about which languages to select, Google Play can help you identify opportunities. First, review the Statistics section in the Developer Console to see where your app has users already. Does your app have a lot of installs in a certain country where you haven’t localized to their language? Are apps like yours popular in a country where your app isn’t available yet? Next, go to the Optimization Tips section in the Developer Console to make sure your APK, store listing, and graphics are consistently translated.
You’ll find the App Translation Service in the Developer Console at the bottom of the APK section — you can start a new translation or manage an existing translation here. You’ll be able to upload your app’s file of string resources, select the languages you want to translate into, select a professional translation vendor, and place your order. Pro tip: you can put your store listing text into the file you upload to the App Translation Service. You’ll be able to communicate with your translator to be sure you get a great result, and download your translated string files. After you do some localization testing, you’ll be ready to publish your newly translated app update on Google Play — with localized store listing text and graphics. Be sure to check back to see the results on your user base, and track the results of marketing campaigns in your new languages using Google Analytics integration.
Good luck! Bonne chance ! ご幸運を祈ります! 행운을 빌어요 ¡Buena suerte! Удачи! Boa Sorte!
Play Console
