The 2018 Google I/O Developer Conference has officially opened in the early morning of May 9th, Beijing time. Let's take a look at the content directly related to developers on the first day of the conference:
Android P
The release of the new Android P system is the biggest highlight of the first day of the I/O conference. Google calls it a new generation version for the 10th anniversary, and focuses on intelligence. It is embodied in the introduction of machine learning, which can understand the user's usage habits and predict actions. Including adaptive battery management such as Adaptive Battery, which can automatically adjust system performance and power consumption according to the user's use of mobile phone functions and APP conditions, and the CPU resource consumption caused by APP wake-up can be reduced by 30%; Adaptive Brightness adaptive brightness management, Would be better to adjust the brightness according to personal preference and surroundings.
Android P also introduces ML Kit, a new software development kit (SDK) that allows developers to incorporate a wide range of Google's pre-built machine learning models into their Android or iOS apps. Models include support for text recognition, face detection, barcode scanning, image tagging and landmark recognition, and more, and can be used both online and offline.
Overall, Android P is going to be smarter and simpler. Its beta public beta version has been released, and the first batch of early adopters has eight brands, including Google's Pixel/Pixel 2, Xiaomi Mix 2S, OPPO R15 Pro, vivo X21UD, Nokia 7 plus, Sony Xperia XZ2 and Essential Phone, etc. Edition is expected to be released this summer.
Android Jetpack
At the meeting, Google also released Android Jetpack, which it called the next-generation Android component designed to help developers speed up application development. Android Jetpack combines the benefits of backward compatibility and immediate updates of support libraries into more components, allowing developers to quickly and easily develop high-quality applications with excellent performance. It handles activities like background tasks, UI navigation, and lifecycle management, saving developers the trouble of writing boilerplate code and focusing on improving the app experience.
The Android Jetpack component includes the following 4 parts: WorkManager, Paging, Navigation and Slices, which are perfectly compatible with Kotlin language and use Android KTX to greatly save the amount of code.
Kotlin
Google says that since it announced support for Kotlin last year, the language has been widely embraced by the developer community. 95% of developers say they like to use Kotlin for Android development, the number of apps developed in Kotlin in the Play Store has increased by 6 times in the last year, 35% of senior developers choose to use Kotlin for development, and this number is increasing increasing month by month.
Google will continue to improve the Kotlin development experience in support libraries, tools, runtime, documentation, and training. Google's Android KTX released in February this year will also be included in the Android Jetpack mentioned above, trying to optimize the Kotlin developer experience; at the same time continue to improve Android Studio, Lint support and tools in R8 optimization; Runtime (Android Runtime) Fine-tuning to speed up the runtime of applications written in Kotlin.
Android Studio 3.2 Canary Edition
Android Studio 3.2 introduces Android Jetpack support, including a visual navigation editor and new code refactoring tools. The Canary version also includes build tools for creating a new Android App Bundle format, Snapshot for quickly launching Android emulators, a new R8 optimizer for downsizing downloads and packages, and a new R8 optimizer for New Energy Profiler to measure app impact on battery life and more.
The latest version of Android Studio 3.2 can be downloaded here .
Android App Bundle and Google Play Dynamic Delivery
Google has introduced a new App mode to Android. Take advantage of a new distribution format, the Android App Bundle, to drastically reduce your app size. Now just build an app bundle in Android Studio and you can cover everything your app needs (for all devices): all languages, all device screen sizes, all hardware architectures.
Then, when the user downloads the app, Google Play's new dynamic delivery will only transfer the code and resources for the user's device. The installers that people see on the Play Store are smaller and faster to download, while also saving on device storage space.
On the left is an example of legacy APK delivery, which requires all resources to be delivered to the device; on the right is an example of dynamic delivery, where only necessary resources are delivered to the device.
In addition, Android App Bundles support modularity, so developers can deliver features on-demand at any time, not just during installation. Developers can construct dynamic function modules in the latest Android Studio Canary version.
Google Play Console
New Play Console features and reports can help developers improve app performance and expand their businesses. Click here to read improvements to the Dashboard, Statistics, Android vitals, Pre-Launch Reports, User Acquisition Reports, and Subscriptions Dashboard.
Google Play Instant
At the previous Game Developers Conference (GDC), Google had released a beta version of Google Play Instant , and at I/O, Google announced that all game developers can build instant apps.
In order to simplify the development of instant applications, Google will also release the corresponding Unity game engine plug-in service this week, as well as integration with the beta version of Cocos Creator. And recently began testing Google Play Instant's compatibility with AdWords, allowing people to try out games directly from ads across all channels covered by Universal App campaigns.
Slices
Slices provides a series of UI templates to help developers present rich dynamic interactive content in their applications, supporting all Android systems and platforms that provide Google services. Slices expose real-time data, scrolling content, inline behavior, and deep links to your app, so users can do anything from playing music to checking for appointment updates. Slices can also include interactive control elements like switches or sliders.
Actions
Actions are a new way to easily access app features and content so users can easily enjoy a developer's app at the right time. App Actions presents different content to users according to different usage habits and relevance, and supports a variety of Google and Android service platforms, including Google Search App, Play Store, and Google Assistant and the launcher.
Google says App Actions will be available to developers soon.
Android Things 1.0
As an operating system (OS) under Google, Android Things can help developers develop and maintain IoT devices at scale. Google said that the number of SDK downloads of the previously launched developer preview version has exceeded 100,000, and Android Things 1.0 will meet developers this week.
The Android Things platform adds support for 3 new system modules (System-on-Modules or SoMs), promises long-term support for the next three years, and lets developers decide if they need extended support to help them Easier to prototype and bring to market. At the same time, an Android Things Console (Android Things Console) was also launched to help developers get Google's latest stability fixes and security upgrades on a regular basis, enabling seamless connection from release to management to device updates.
Content referenced from: Google Developers , bgr.com