At
Google I/O today we announced the latest version of the Android
platform, Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). With Jelly Bean, we’ve made the
great things about Android even better with improved system performance
and enhanced user features.
Improvements include a smoother and more responsive UI across the system, a home screen that automatically adapts to fit your content, a powerful predictive keyboard, richer and more interactive notifications, larger payload sizes for Android Beam sharing and much more. For a lowdown on what’s new, head over to the Jelly Bean platform highlights.
Of course, Jelly Bean wouldn’t be complete without a healthy serving of new APIs for app developers. Here are some of the new APIs that Jelly Bean introduces:
For Android devices with the Google Play, we launched the following at Google I/O today:
Improvements include a smoother and more responsive UI across the system, a home screen that automatically adapts to fit your content, a powerful predictive keyboard, richer and more interactive notifications, larger payload sizes for Android Beam sharing and much more. For a lowdown on what’s new, head over to the Jelly Bean platform highlights.
Of course, Jelly Bean wouldn’t be complete without a healthy serving of new APIs for app developers. Here are some of the new APIs that Jelly Bean introduces:
- Expandable notifications: Android 4.1 brings a major update
to the Android notifications framework. Apps can now display larger,
richer notifications to users that can be expanded and collapsed with a
pinch. Users can now take actions directly from the notification shade,
and notifications support new types of content, including photos.
- Android Beam: In Android 4.1, Android Beam makes it easier to
share images, videos, or other payloads by leveraging Bluetooth for the
data transfer.
- Bi-directional text support: Android 4.1 helps you to reach more users through support for for bi-directional text in TextView and EditText elements.
- Gesture mode: New APIs for accessibility services let you
handle gestures and manage accessibility focus. Now you can traverse any
element on the screen using gestures, accessories, you name it.
- Media codec access: Provides low-level access to platform hardware and software codecs.
- Wi-Fi Direct service discoverability: New API provides
pre-associated service discovery letting apps get more information from
nearby devices about the services they support, before they attempt to
connect.
- Network bandwidth management: New API provides ability to detect metered networks, including tethering to a mobile hotspot.
For Android devices with the Google Play, we launched the following at Google I/O today:
- Smart app updates: For Android 2.3, Gingerbread devices and
up, when there is a new version of an app in Google Play, only the parts
of the app that changed are downloaded to users’ devices. On average, a
smart app update is a third the size of a full apk update. This means
your users save bandwidth and battery and the best part? You don’t have
to do a thing. This is automatically enabled for all apps downloaded
from Google Play.
- App encryption: From Jelly Bean and forward, paid apps in
Google Play are encrypted with a device-specific key before they are
delivered and stored on the device. We know you work hard building your
apps. We work hard to protect your investment.
- Google Cloud Messaging for Android: This is the next version
of C2DM and goes back to Froyo. Getting started is easy and has a whole
bunch of new APIs than C2DM has to offer. If you sign-up for GCM, you
will be able to see C2DM and GCM stats in the Android developer console.
Most importantly, the service is free and there are no quotas. [Learn more.]
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