Android N Is Now Officially Android Nougat

The next major version of Google's mobile operating system, which has for long been known simply as Android N, now has its official name.

Continuing the tradition of naming Android versions after sweet treats and desserts, Android 7.0 has been given the name Android Nougat.

The announcement was made by Google through a variety of platforms, including through Android's official Twitter account. The statue design for the new operating system has also been revealed, with the green Android robot mascot standing on top of three nougat bars of different flavors.

The release, initially announced in March and currently on its second (and mostly stable) beta, brings new features like an improved notification shade and split-screen multitasking to the mobile OS, while also improving on features like Doze that came with Marshmallow last year. The release also has Daydream, Google's new VR platform, baked in, though it'll only be supported by Daydream-ready handsets running the OS.

Google took much of the tech world by surprise when it announced the OS in March – two months before its I/O developer conference – and even more so by making the Developer Preview available to test immediately.

Since initially launching the preview programme, Google has been working with manufacturers such as Sony to make it available for a wider range of devices, including the Xperia Z3.

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Android Finally Gets BBM Video Chat in Beta

 

BlackBerry Messenger users on BlackBerry 10-powered devices have been able to make video calls for quite some time now, but this feature hasn’t been expanded to iOS and Android users as yet, even though they now form a significant chunk of the messaging service’s user base. That changes today as a new update of BBM for Android has been released which finally brings the video chat feature in beta.

There was a time when BBM was one of the most widely used instant messaging services, at that time the service was exclusive to BlackBerry handsets, and that was a time when people actually used to buy BB handsets.

The world has moved on since then, and ultimately the company had to take BBM cross-platform or risk having it die a slow death. Now that it’s cross-platform it’s available on two of the most popular mobile platforms in the market.

BlackBerry Messenger for Android gets a new update today that’s available for download now in the Google Play Store. It brings the BBM video chat feature in beta for Android users, it’s available in beta for users in the United States and Canada only for now but the feature will be rolled out broadly in the near future.

The Android update has been released now and it shouldn’t be long before the iOS update arrives with the same feature.


Source: Ubergizmo

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The Windows 10 Anniversary Update can mirror Android notifications

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update just keeps getting crazier. After teaming up with Ubuntu to build an entire Linux subsystem and Unix's Bash shell into Windows 10, Microsoft is now integrating Android-specific features into the OS. If you're an Android user, you'll be able to mirror your phone notifications on your Windows 10 computer, and if you dismiss a notification on one device, it will be dismissed on all your devices.

Microsoft actually gave cloud capabilities to the entire Action Center in Windows 10, allowing Windows 10 devices to sync notification centers with one another. Since Android 4.3, Android has provided a way to ship the entire notification panel off to other apps. With the Cortana app, Microsoft is connecting these capabilities, provided you sign in to both devices with your Microsoft account. You don't just see the notifications—you can interact with them, too. The demo (which starts at about 16:30 in this video) demonstrates replying in-line to an Android SMS notification from a Windows 10 device.

At Build 2016, the keynote barely mentioned Windows Mobile at all. Instead, iOS and Android were name dropped more than Microsoft's own platform. Microsoft seems less interested in using its ecosystem to prop up Windows Mobile and more interested in helping Windows users live a multi-OS life on whatever mobile platform they prefer. With the Action Center's cloud capabilities, Microsoft is making the world's most popular desktop operating system work with the world's most popular mobile operating system.

Now how long until we get an Android Lumia?



Source:  Arstechnica

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Lollipop is now the most used Android version

There is a new Android king in town, and its name is Lollipop. Google released its monthly update to the Platform Versions page for Android today, and the gold and silver positions have swapped.
Android Lollipop has managed to finally pass Android KitKat in terms of adoption. The achievement took 16 months: Google debuted the Nexus 9, the first device to sport Android 5.0, back in November 2014.

The sad reality with Android adoption is that only some months after a new version is released (in this case Marshmallow) does its predecessor finally take first place. In other words, the most used version of Android is always outdated.

Here are the changes between February and March:

• Android 6.0 Marshmallow (October 2015): Up 1.1 points to 2.3 percent
• Android 5.0/5.1 Lollipop (November 2014, March 2015): Up 2.0 points to 36.1 percent
• Android 4.4 KitKat (October 2013): Down 1.2 points to 34.3 percent
• Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jelly Bean (July 2012, November 2012, and July 2013): Down 1.6 points to 22.3 percent
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (December 2011): Down 0.2 points to 2.3 percent
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread (February 2011): Down 0.1 points to 2.6 percent
• Android 2.2 Froyo (May 2010): Flat at 0.1 percent

As with any update courtesy of the Platform Versions tool, we have to point out that the data is gathered from the Google Play Store app, which requires Android 2.2 and above. This means devices running older versions are not included, nor are devices that don’t have Google Play installed (which includes many Android phones and tablets in China, Amazon’s Fire line, and so on). Also, Android versions that have less than 0.1 percent adoption, such as Android 3.0 Honeycomb, are not listed.
For the sake of comparison, here’s the Android adoption chart for February:

  

The Android adoption order now stands at: Lollipop in first place, KitKat in second, Jelly Bean in third, Gingerbread in fourth, ICS and Marshmallow tied for fifth, and Froyo in last. All eyes will now be on Marshmallow’s slow but hopefully steady growth.

Source: Venture Beat

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Apple’s iPhone 6S outdo every Android phone in a major benchmark test

Benchmark and performance enthusiasts look forward to AnTuTu’s Global Top 10 Best Performance Smartphones each year, but it’s a little different this time around. Past reports only included Android phones, but thanks to AnTuTu 6.0, which was released last year as a cross-platform app, the iPhone can now be included in the test.

Unfortunately for Android fans, the result wasn’t so good. To say the iPhone 6S obliterated the competition would be an understatement. The iPhone 6S came in first with a score of 132,620. The next phone in line, the Huawei Mate 8, scored only 92,746. If you’re doing the math, that means the iPhone 6S is about 42 percent faster.

Samsung, Android’s most popular brand, performed far worse. It still came in at fourth place among the phones tested, though. The iPhone 6S was about 60 percent faster than both the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus.

Even last year’s iPhone 6 outperformed most other Android phones, as it placed sixth overall. It’s about 3 percent faster than the Google Nexus 6P, which became available only a few months ago.
What’s most interesting about this data is the fact that Apple isn’t in a spec war like the one in which Android manufacturers find themselves. Companies that make Android phones continue to push the boundaries with octa-core processors and as much as 4GB of RAM. The competition among Android phones has heated up so much that companies like Samsung and Huawei are now manufacturing their own in-house processors.

However, the iPhone 6S is rocking its own 64-bit dual-core A9 processor with only 2GB of RAM. Kudos have to be given to Apple on its ability to be so efficient with so little. The efficiency not only gives the iPhone more power, but it likely helps battery life as well, which is a good thing, seeing as iPhone battery life is notoriously short.

AnTuTu tests only one device per model and averages 500 data samples for each phone. The company didn’t include the iPhone 6S Plus or the iPhone 6 Plus because there were no significant differences when compared to the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6. It’s unclear if that was also the case for the Samsung phone that was chosen for the test.

Although the results are intriguing, it’s important to note that benchmark tests aren’t everything, and sometimes real-world performance is different.

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Lollipop now on nearly 30 percent of Android devices, Marshmallow up to 0.5 percent

Google has released its latest monthly update on the distribution numbers for each version of Android. In the latest update, we see Lollipop continuing its rise, while Marshmallow has also bumped up a tad more. The new numbers show that Marshmallow is now on 0.5 percent of active devices, after having made its debut on the chart in November with a 0.3 percent share. Similarly, Lollipop now claims a share of 29.5 percent compared to 25.6 percent in November.

As for the rest, KitKat is down to 36.6 percent of active devices from 37.8 percent a month ago, while Jelly Bean has also dropped from 29 percent to 26.9 percent. Ice Cream Sandwich is down to 2.9 percent from 3.3, and Gingerbread dipped slightly to 3.4 percent from 3.8. Finally, rounding things out is Froyo, which is still managing to hold steady at 0.2 percent.

Source: Google

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Android announces emoji update coming next week

Android users are soon going to get a whole load of new emoji to express themselves with.

Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of Android at Google, announced on Twitter on Thursday morning that the mobile operating system will be introducing a suite of new emoji next week. These include the unicorn, the lion, the crab — and more.

Because of the way Android works, the new emoji won't be available on all Android devices simultaneously. Google is going to make them available on its Nexus devices — its line of flagship smartphones — next week. It is also sharing the fonts and technical details with other manufacturers, and those companies will then be responsible for pushing out an update to customers' smartphones.

So unless you're using a Nexus device, how soon you get them depends on when Samsung, or LG, or HTC, or whatever smartphone company your device is made by gets around to releasing the update.

@rjcc new keyboard, new font, new code, so new system image. Nexus will update next week. OEMs decide their own update schedules.

— Hiroshi Lockheimer (@lockheimer)December 3, 2015

Emoji aren't created by tech companies like Google and Apple (although the way they ultimately look is determined by the fonts the company chooses). Instead, a non-profit organization called the Unicode Consortium sets the standards.

Once the Unicode Consortium settles on new emoji, it's then up to Google/Apple/Microsoft/etc. to integrate support for the new emoji into their products if they want to be able to render them properly. Google could (hypothetically) choose not to use a certain emoji if it didn't like it, and new emojis are not immediately available.

We've reached out to Google for confirmation on exactly which emoji are making their way to Android, and will update this story when it responds. But it seems like a reasonable assumption that Google is going to update Android to support every emoji it doesn't currently — as Apple did earlier this year, when it released the iOS 9.1 update. That brought 184 new emoji to Apple's mobile operating system.

These new emoji included the robot, the turkey, and the middle finger, according to emoji news site Emojipedia.

Source :Tech Insider 

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Google Launches Android Studio 2.0 With Improved Android Emulator And New Instant Run Feature

Google today launched version 2.0 of its Android Studio integrated development environment (IDE) for writing apps for its mobile operating system.

Android Studio, which is based onIntelliJ, launched back in 2013 and came out of beta a year ago. It includes everything a developer needs to build an app, including a code editor, code analysis tools, emulators for all of Google’s Android platforms, and more.

The new version is now available in the Canary release channel of Android Studio.

With version 2.0, as Google’s group product manager for Android Studio Stephanie Cuthbertson told me, the team wanted to build on the foundation it laid over the last two years and focus on speed. “For the IDE to be delightful, it doesn’t just have to be stable — but amazingly stabled,” she told me. The team felt that it achieved this with the last couple of releases.

With this update, Google massively accelerated deployment speeds, for example. Cuthbertson tells me that a full build is now 2x to 2.5x faster than in previous releases. That’s a huge step forward, but what developers will likely even more appreciate in this new version is the addition of a new feature called “Instant Run.” This almost mimics the experience of writing HTML, where you write your code, reload your browser and see what changed. On mobile, that process typically takes a quite bit longer, even with the improved build speeds.

Instant Run lets developers build and deploy their apps once (both to the emulator or to a physical device) and then as they change their code and deploy it, it’ll only take a second or two before they can see those changes in the running app. This feature will work for all apps that target Ice Cream Sandwich and later. Cuthbertson politely refused to tell us how exactly Instant Run works, but promised that Google will detail the technology behind this feature in the future.

Given the size of the Android ecosystem, it’s almost impossible for most developers to test their apps on even the most popular devices early on in the development phase. With services likeXamarin Test Cloud, the AWS Device Farm, and Google’s own Test Lab, developers have plenty of options to test their apps later on, but during the development process, most of the testing happens with the help of emulators. Google’s own emulator wasn’t always the fastest and easiest to use (to the point where Microsoft ended up releasing its own).

With this update, Google is introducing new emulators that, given modern hardware, should run faster than any physical device. The team also rebuild the interface, so that it’s now easy to trigger typical actions like firing up the camera. Developers will also be able to emulate different network conditions and emulate the GPS (even with pre-configured paths). The emulator also includes access to all the standard Google Play services. Maybe more importantly, though, you can now simply resize the emulator window to test different screen sizes.

For developers who build graphics-intensive apps and games, the Studio now also includes a new GPU profiler. This will allow developers to see exactly what’s happening every time the screen draws a new image to trace performance issues, for example. This tool is still officially in preview.

One area Google has recently focused on is app indexing, which brings content from apps into its search engine. The Android Studio team worked closely with the Search team to make it easier to enable this feature in new apps. The emulator now automatically generates deep links for Google Search, for example.

Before the launch of Android Studio, Google offered a number of tools for the Eclipse IDE. Earlier this year, Google announced that it would stop supporting this option at the end of the year, something Cuthbertson also stressed this in our interview. Chances are there are still quite a few Android developers who are using the old tools to develop their apps. At this point, though, Google’s official tools — which also include all the latest updates to IntelliJ — are likely the far better option for most, especially given that Google now offers a far improved build system in this new version of Android Studio.

Source :TechCrunch 

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The second edition of Android app development guide now available from Google

Making a successful Android app requires skill and a design that both makes the app good at what it does and also appeal to device owners. To help in that effort last year Google published an online guide that shared tips and tricks to show developers the way to success.

That guide was downloaded over 200,000 times and Google has released a second edition giving more advice to developers. The new guide adds features designed to help create better apps on the Google Play store.

The guide covers building better beta testing procedures, offering app invites to entice people to use the app, and how to conduct experiments in store listing methods to get apps noticed.

The English edition of the developer's guide can be downloaded from the Android Developer's website and on Google Play. It should be available soon in a number of languages.

Google is augmenting the book with video episodes on its Android Developer YouTube channel. The first two episodes are available now and there are plans to release two new video episodes every week.

Source :ZDNet 

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Android Wear SDK now has Marshmallow support

For a while now, developers of Android Wearapps have had to cope with a handful of irritating details that made working in the environment less than awesome. However, Google has now updated the Android Wear SDK to include support for API 23, which is Android 6.0 Marshmallowfunctionality. This not only lets devs play with all the perks of Marshmallow, but it also solve a few developmental issues that had been plaguing the SDK for a while.

For example, API 23 allows developers to quickly distinguish between round and square Wear devices with the -round/-notround resource qualifiers. This takes care of a long-standing difficulty that made creating apps for the shape-variable universe of Android Wear cumbersome. Now this simple tag will let apps intelligently choose from a set of images and layouts to more appropriately fit the screen of a given device.

The update also brings a new runtime permissions model to the table, allowing devs and users to take advantage of Marshmallow’s ability to discretely determine permissions for individual apps. It also takes into account speakers for Wear devices, which until the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, had been silent. API 23 makes incorporating sounds into Wear apps as easy as doing so for smartphone or tablet apps.

Tired of uploading every version of your app to a Wear device to test it out? Google has pushed out an official Wear emulator just for you, then. This is sure to make Wear app development easier and quicker across the board. The emulator runs both Lollipop and Marshmallow, so you can easily make sure your app runs well on the vast majority of Wear devices currently on the market.

Source :Android Authority 

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