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 Attributes

For 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 Attributes

For 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 optional

One 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

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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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.

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.

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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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):

1. Games.Players.getPlayerSearchIntent()
2. Games.Players.loadConnectedPlayers()
3. Games.Players.loadInvitablePlayers()
4. The value LeaderboardVariant.COLLECTION_SOCIAL
5. Invitations.loadInvitations()
6. RealtimeMultiplayer.getSelectOpponentsIntent()
7. TurnBasedMultiplayer.getSelectOpponentsIntent()
8. 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.

Set goals, both large and small

Create stickiness

Drive virality

Measure cohorts

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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

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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.

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.

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.

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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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！

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!

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.

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.

• 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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Online furniture seller Wayfair and Niantic's Pokémon GO have more in common than you might think. Both of these companies use augmented reality to create innovative, immersive experiences for their users. I sat down with Mike Festa, Director of Wayfair Next, and Tatsuo Nomura, Product Manager for Pokémon GO, at our recent Playtime event to discuss how developers can make the most of AR as a platform.

From 3D furniture modelling in WayfairView using Tango, to logging countless miles catching Pokémon, hear how these developers are innovating with AR, and get their advice for others looking to use AR in their apps and games.

Check out more sessions from our global Playtime events to learn best practices for your app and game businesses. Also, stay up to date with more videos from events, product news, and tips to help grow your business on Google Play with the Playbook for Developers app.

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What’s next for Google Play

Learn how we're helping users discover apps in the right context, creating new ways to engage with users beyond the install, and powering innovative experiences on emerging platforms like virtual reality, wearables, and auto.

Android development in 2016

Android development is more powerful and efficient than ever before. Android Studio brings you speed, smarts, and support for Android Nougat. The broad range of cross-platform tools on Firecase can improve your app on Android and beyond. Material Design and Vulkan continue to improve the user experience and increase engagement.

Daydream & Tango

Daydream View is a VR headset and controller by Google that lets people explore new worlds, or play games that put them at the center of action. Learn how we're helping users discover apps in the right context and powering new experiences with Daydream and Tango.

Fireside chat - Wayfair & Pokémon GO on augmented reality

Augmented reality engages and delights people everywhere. In this fireside chat, online furniture seller Wayfair and Niantic's Pokémon GO share their experiences with AR and discuss how other developers can make the most of the platform.

Building for billions, featuring best practices from Maliyo Games

Learn how to create apps and games for emerging markets, which are expected to drive 80% of global smartphone growth by 2020, by recognizing the key challenges and designing the right app experiences to overcome them.

At minute 16:41, hear tips from Hugo Obi, co-founder of Nigerian games developer Maliyo.

Launch smart on Google Play

Set your app up for success using experimentation and iteration. Learn best practices for soft launching and adapting your app for different markets and device types.

Sustainable growth solves most problems for apps, featuring best practices from SoundCloud & Peak

Planning and executing a great growth strategy involves a complex set of choices and mastery of many tools. In this session we discuss topics including key business objectives, tools, and techniques to help you solve the growth puzzle with our partner, SoundCloud.

Also, check out some growth best practices from Peak.

Creating sustainable user growth for startups, by Greylock

User growth isn't just about growing the number of users you have. The key to sustainability is creating and delivering core product value. In this session, VC Greylock discusses how to identify your core action to focus on and shows you how to use these insights to optimize your app for long term growth.

App engagement is the new black, featuring best practices from Lifesum

As the app marketplace becomes more competitive, developer success depends on retaining users in apps they love. Find out which Google tools and features can help you analyze your users' behaviors, improve engagement and retention in your app and hear insights from others developers including Lifesum.

Predicting lifetime value in the apps world

Deepdive into lifetime value models and predictive analytics in the apps ecosystem. Tactics to get the most out of identified segments and how to upgrade their behaviors to minimize churn.

Subscriptions update

Learn about Google's efforts to enable users, around the world, to seamlessly and safely pay for content. This session provides updates on Google Play billing and recent enhancements to our subscriptions platform.

One game fits all, featuring best practices from Space Ape Games

Customize your game's experience for different users by targeting them with lifetime value models and predictive analytics. Hear how these concepts are applied by Space Ape Games to improve retention and monetization of their titles.

Promoting your game and growing your user base, featuring best practices from Seriously

Learn how to use Google's latest tools, like Firebase, for benchmarking, acquiring users and measuring your activities. Also, hear game developer Seriously share their latest insights and strategies on YouTube influencer campaigns.

Creating long-term retention, loyalty and value with engaging LiveOps events, featuring best practices from Kabam & Creative Mobile

Learn how successful developers keep their games fresh and engaging with Live Operations. In this talk, the LiveOps expert on Marvel: Contest of Champions discusses tips about the art and science of running an engaging LiveOps event.

Also check out the tips and best practices to run successful LiveOps from games developer Creative Mobile.

Panel - Play fair: Maintaining a level playing field in your game, featuring Space Ape Games and Kongregate

Ensuring that your game is fair is critical to success. Find out how game developers are achieving this and some ways Google Play can help.

Why you need to build for families

Family-based households with children have higher tablet and smartphone ownership rates than the general population. These families are more likely to make purchases on their mobile devices and play games. Learn about how parents choose what to download and buy, and how you can prepare for maximum conversion.

Two keys to growth: user acquisition & app engagement, by Cartoon Network

Hear how Cartoon Network leverages their network to cross-promote new titles, acquire new users and keep them engaged through immersive experiences.

Go global: Getting ready for the emerging markets revolution, by Papumba

Papumba has a clear vision to grow a global business. Hear how they work with experts to adapt their games to local markets and leverage Google Play's developer tools to find success around the world.

Optimizing for a post install world

You've spent time and resources getting users to download your apps, but what happens after the install? Learn how to minimize churn and keep families engaged with your content long term.

Monetization best practices on freemium, by 01 Digital

Learn how 01 Digital uses In-App-Purchases (IAP) to effectively monetize their apps while maintaining a safe environment for families.

Building a subscription business that appeals to parents, by PlayKids

PlayKids has been at the forefront of the subscription business model since their inception. See how they best serve their subscribers by refreshing their content, expanding their offerings and investing in new verticals.

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Android users are downloading tens of billions of apps and games on Google Play. We're also seeing developers update their apps frequently in order to provide users with great content, improve security, and enhance the overall user experience. It takes a lot of data to download these updates and we know users care about how much data their devices are using. Earlier this year, we announced that we started using the bsdiff algorithm (by Colin Percival). Using bsdiff, we were able to reduce the size of app updates on average by 47% compared to the full APK size.

Today, we're excited to share a new approach that goes further — File-by-File patching. App Updates using File-by-File patching are, on average, 65% smaller than the full app, and in some cases more than 90% smaller.

The savings, compared to our previous approach, add up to 6 petabytes of user data saved per day!

In order to get the new version of the app, Google Play sends your device a patch that describes the differences between the old and new versions of the app.

Imagine you are an author of a book about to be published, and wish to change a single sentence - it's much easier to tell the editor which sentence to change and what to change, rather than send an entirely new book. In the same way, patches are much smaller and much faster to download than the entire APK.

Techniques used in File-by-File patching

Android apps are packaged as APKs, which are ZIP files with special conventions. Most of the content within the ZIP files (and APKs) is compressed using a technology called Deflate. Deflate is really good at compressing data but it has a drawback: it makes identifying changes in the original (uncompressed) content really hard. Even a tiny change to the original content (like changing one word in a book) can make the compressed output of deflate look completely different. Describing the differences between the original content is easy, but describing the differences between the compressed content is so hard that it leads to inefficient patches.

Watch how much the compressed text on the right side changes from a one-letter change in the uncompressed text on the left:

File-by-File therefore is based on detecting changes in the uncompressed data. To generate a patch, we first decompress both old and new files before computing the delta (we still use bsdiff here). Then to apply the patch, we decompress the old file, apply the delta to the uncompressed content and then recompress the new file. In doing so, we need to make sure that the APK on your device is a perfect match, byte for byte, to the one on the Play Store (see APK Signature Schema v2 for why).

When recompressing the new file, we hit two complications. First, Deflate has a number of settings that affect output; and we don't know which settings were used in the first place. Second, many versions of deflate exist and we need to know whether the version on your device is suitable.

Fortunately, after analysis of the apps on the Play Store, we've discovered that recent and compatible versions of deflate based on zlib (the most popular deflate library) account for almost all deflated content in the Play Store. In addition, the default settings (level=6) and maximum compression settings (level=9) are the only settings we encountered in practice.

Knowing this, we can detect and reproduce the original deflate settings. This makes it possible to uncompress the data, apply a patch, and then recompress the data back to exactly the same bytes as originally uploaded.

However, there is one trade off; extra processing power is needed on the device. On modern devices (e.g. from 2015), recompression can take a little over a second per megabyte and on older or less powerful devices it can be longer. Analysis so far shows that, on average, if the patch size is halved then the time spent applying the patch (which for File-by-File includes recompression) is doubled.

For now, we are limiting the use of this new patching technology to auto-updates only, i.e. the updates that take place in the background, usually at night when your phone is plugged into power and you're not likely to be using it. This ensures that users won't have to wait any longer than usual for an update to finish when manually updating an app.

How effective is File-by-File Patching?

Here are examples of app updates already using File-by-File Patching:

Saving data and making our users (& developers!) happy

These changes are designed to ensure our community of over a billion Android users use as little data as possible for regular app updates. The best thing is that as a developer you don't need to do anything. You get these reductions to your update size for free!

If you'd like to know more about File-by-File patching, including the technical details, head over to the Archive Patcher GitHub project where you can find information, including the source code. Yes, File-by-File patching is completely open-source!

As a developer if you're interested in reducing your APK size still further, here are some general tips on reducing APK size.

Android 7.1.1 Nougat!

Today we're rolling out an update to Nougat -- Android 7.1.1 for Pixel and Pixel XL devices and the full lineup of supported Nexus devices. We're also pushing the Android 7.1.1 source code to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) so that device makers can get their hands on the latest version of Android.

With Android 7.1.1 officially on it's way to users, it's a good time to make sure your apps are ready.

What's in Android 7.1.1?

Android 7.1.1 is an incremental release that builds on the features already available on Pixel and Pixel XL devices, adding a handful of new features for consumers as well as optimizations and bug fixes on top of the base Android 7.1 platform (API level 25).

If you haven't explored the developer features, you'll want to take a look at app shortcuts, round icon resources, and image keyboard support, among others -- you can see the full list of developer features here. For details on API Level 25, check out the API diffs and the API reference.

You can find an overview of all of the Android Nougat developer resources here, including details on the core Android 7.0 Nougat behavior changes and developer features.c

Coming to consumer devices soon

We're starting the Android 7.1.1 rollout today, and we expect it to reach all eligible devices over the next several weeks. Pixel and Pixel XL devices will get the over-the-air (OTA) update, as will Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Pixel C, and General Mobile 4G (Android One) devices. Devices enrolled in the Android Beta Program will receive the final version as well. As always, you can also download and flash this update manually.

We've also been working with our device manufacturer partners to bring Android 7.1.1 to their devices in the months ahead.

Make sure your apps are ready

Take this opportunity to test your apps for compatibility and optimize them to look their best on Android 7.1.1, such as by providing round icons and adding app shortcuts. We recommend compiling your app with, and ideally targeting, API 25. See our recent post for details.

With the final platform we’re updating the platform and build tools in Android Studio, as well as the API Level 25 emulator system images. The latest version of the support library (25.0.1) is also available for you to add image keyboard support, bottom navigation, and other features for devices running API Level 25 or earlier.

We're also providing downloadable factory and OTA images on the Nexus Images page to help you do final testing on your Pixel and Nexus devices. To help scale your testing, make sure to take advantage of Firebase Test Lab for Android and run your tests in the cloud at no charge through the end of December.

After your final testing, publish your apps to your alpha, beta, or production channels in the Google Play Developer Console.

What's next?

We'll soon be closing open bugs logged against Developer Preview builds, but please keep the feedback coming! If you still see an issue that you filed in the preview tracker, just file a new issue against Android 7.1 in the AOSP issue tracker. You can also continue to give us feedback or ask questions in the developer community.

As mentioned back in August, we've moved Android Nougat into a regular maintenance cycle and we're already started work on refinements and bug fixes for the next incremental update. If you have an eligible device that's currently enrolled in the Android Beta Program, your device will automatically receive preview updates of upcoming Android Nougat releases as soon as they are available. If you don't want to receive those updates, just visit the Beta site and unenroll the device.

Thanks for being part of the developer preview. Let us know how this year's preview met your needs by taking a short survey. Your feedback helps to shape our future releases.

Indie game developers are some of the most exciting and innovative teams to work with. While developers large and small exist on the same field, gone are the days where you hit publish and turn your back, moving on to the next project. We've gathered a few developer stories coming out of Latin America sharing experiences and advice.

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As one of our most popular Udacity courses, the Developing Android Apps course was recently updated to ensure developers have the resources to build high quality apps. This course, which has already helped more than half a million developers learn to build Android apps, has been through the car wash and come out sparkling clean and updated.

Google and Udacity have worked together to update the course to include the very latest changes in Android and Android Studio, including how to use the new Constraint Layout editor, and how to use Firebase Job Dispatcher. Learn best practices for building Android apps using Android 7.0 (Nougat) while keeping your apps backwards compatible in older versions, learning at your own pace in your own time.

You sent us feedback that some of the lessons were a little difficult to get through, so we've restructured the lessons and added smaller apps for you to build as you progress through the course. So not only will you build the Sunshine weather app as a complete, integrated application that spans the entire course, but you'll also create an app in each lesson to help you learn individual concepts.

Combined package for Developing Android Apps course and Associate Android Developer Certification

This updated course teaches the skills that are tested by the Associate Android Developer certification exam. Udacity is offering a package that combines the updated Developing Android Apps course with a voucher for the Associate Android Developer certification exam. If you pass this exam, you will earn the Associate Android Developer Certification and show that you are competent and skilled in tasks that an entry-level Android developer typically performs. Enroll in Udacity's Fast Track to get prepared and take the Associate Android developer exam at: https://www.udacity.com/course/nd818.

The Play Store contains the largest catalog of apps in the world. As our users make decisions about the apps they'd like to install, we want to ensure Play provides a trustworthy experience.

Recently, we announced our improvements in fighting fraudulent and spam app installs. In continuing our efforts to combat spammy behavior, we've also improved the ways we identify and remove fake reviews and ratings. With this enhanced capability we are now able to identify and remove more fake reviews and ratings with greater accuracy.

In the vast majority of cases, no action is needed. If you are working with someone else to promote your app (e.g., third-party marketing agencies), we advise you to check-in and ensure that their promotion techniques use legitimate practices, and adhere to the Google Play Developer Policy. The basic rule of thumb for reviews and ratings is that they should come from genuine users, and developers should not attempt to manipulate them in any form (e.g., fake, paid, incentivized).

We will continue making such enhancements to our systems that will further help protect the integrity of Google Play, our developer community, and ultimately our end users.

Learn more how to add an introductory price to your subscription, and get the News Publisher Playbook to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices to help you find success for your news apps on Google Play.

We know that many developers want to take advantage of growth opportunities in new regions, but are held back by not knowing the most important areas to focus on. That's why we wanted to share stories from our partners in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It's a fast growing region for Google Play, and one that already represents a sizable revenue opportunity. They've shared their experiences, and some key things to focus on if you're thinking of launching in the region.

Middle East and North Africa overview

MENA is a diverse region in terms of disposable income, access to connectivity, and smartphone penetration. However, it is possible to broadly group MENA into two types of market:

Growth markets

• Examples: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
• Very high smartphone penetration (on par with top western european markets),
• Large disposable income
• Robust growth in spend on mobile apps and games

Emerging markets

• Examples: Morocco, Egypt and Iraq.
• Large populations
• Significant growth in smartphone (primarily Android) adoption.

Opportunities

Localization

If you want to be successful in MENA, localization is key. In Saudi Arabia 19 of the top 20 grossing apps & games have their Google Play Store listing localized and the majority of those have their actual app/game localized as well. By localizing to Arabic, mobile app and game developers have found great success in the region.

When Singapore-based Wego.com localized to Arabic, they achieved over 200% YoY growth in MENA, grew their app rating from 3.5 to over 4.5 among Arab travelers and increased Arab users' retention rates by 200%. Today, MENA represents over 65% of their users.

To do localization well, here are a few things to consider:

• Localize your store listing into Arabic including your video, screenshots and text. If you are targeting specific countries within MENA consider using local dialects, otherwise use formal Arabic. Consider using Store Listing Experiments to optimize your listing for local audiences.
• If applicable, flip your app/game UI to be right-to-left.
• Beware of common issues when localizing to Arabic: Arabic letters appearing disjointed or showing up in reverse order and the ordering of words getting mixed up when sentences contain both Latin and Arabic words
• Localize pricing by showing appropriate local currency and rounding. Note that different countries in MENA have different currencies and affordability/willingness to pay.
• Plan around major local events such as the holy month of Ramadan, when after fasting from dawn to sunset, families and loved ones gather for meals, laughs and stories. We've found that during this month usage of apps and games increases significantly in MENA.
• Provide local customer support
• Be culturally sensitive in your communication and content - avoid stereotypes and keep in mind the relatively conservative nature of users in the region
• Leverage the power of YouTube to reach your audiences in MENA. Saudi Arabia for instance is the second largest market for YouTube globally in terms of views per capita.

Refer to our Localization Checklist for some best practices when localizing for any language.

Gaming

Gaming is a high growth and revenue opportunity in MENA. Most countries in the region have a median age of 30 or lower, smartphone growth will continue to grow at double digits, which makes gaming a key segment for users in the region. Today's local top grossing charts and dominated by Midcore strategy games. Interestingly, GCC countries have some of the highest Average Revenue Per Paying User rates globally.

International titles, including Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Mobile Strike and Clash of Kings, have performed incredibly well in the region. In addition, titles specifically targeting MENA have also seen tremendous success. Revenge of the Sultans, by ONEMT, from China, has been the top grossing title across several MENA countries for many months. Similarly, when IGG.com launched the Arabic version of Castle Clash, they grew revenue from MENA by 58% within 4 months.

As the market evolves, there is also a huge opportunity for other genres (such as RPG, FPS, and sports) which are not present at scale in the region yet.

Google Play in MENA

We continue to invest in making sure that users are able to pay for their favorite apps and games by launching locally relevant payment methods in MENA. Today, we have carrier billing available with the major networks in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait. We plan to expand coverage in more countries, including Qatar and Bahrain, in the future.

We are also committed to increasing the quality and availability of Arabic apps and games for MENA users, which is why we launched our Now in Arabic collection featuring apps and games that have recently localized to Arabic. This collection will be regularly updated. If you're interested in being included, submit your localized app/game.

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Today we're rolling out an update to the Android 7.1 Developer Preview -- the last before we release the final Android 7.1.1 platform to the ecosystem. Android 7.1.1 includes the developer features already available on Pixel and Pixel XL devices and adds optimizations and bug fixes on top of the base Android 7.1 platform. With Developer Preview 2, you can make sure your apps are ready for Android 7.1.1 and the consumers that will soon be running it on their devices.

As highlighted in October, we're also expanding the range of devices that can receive this Developer Preview update to Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, and Pixel C.

If you have a supported device that's enrolled in the Android Beta Program, you'll receive an update to Developer Preview 2 over the coming week. If you haven't enrolled your device yet, just visit the site to enroll your device and get the update.

In early December, we'll roll out Android 7.1.1 to the full lineup of supported devices as well as Pixel and Pixel XL devices.

What's in this update?

Developer Preview 2 is a release candidate for Android 7.1.1 that you can use to complete your app development and testing in preparation for the upcoming final release. In includes near-final system behaviors and UI, along with the latest bug fixes and optimizations across the system and Google apps.

It also includes the developer features and APIs (API level 25) already introduced in Developer Preview 1. If you haven't explored the developer features, you'll want to take a look at app shortcuts, round icon resources, and image keyboard support, among others -- you can see the full list of developer features here.

With Developer Preview 2, we're also updating the SDK build and platform tools in Android Studio, the Android 7.1.1 platform, and the API Level 25 emulator system images. The latest version of the support library (25.0.1) is also available for you to add image keyboard support, bottom navigation, and other features for devices running API Level 25 or earlier.

For details on API Level 25 check out the API diffs and the updated API reference on the developer preview site.

Get your apps ready for Android 7.1

Now is the time to optimize your apps to look their best on Android 7.1.1. To get started, update to Android Studio 2.2.2 and then download the API Level 25 platform, emulator system images, and tools through the SDK Manager in Android Studio.

After installing the API Level 25 SDK, you can update your project's compileSdkVersion to 25 to build and test against the new APIs. If you're doing compatibility testing, we recommend updating your app's targetSdkVersion to 25 to test your app with compatibility behaviors disabled. For details on how to set up your app with the API Level 25 SDK, see Set up the Preview.

If you're adding app shortcuts or circular launcher icons to your app, you can use Android Studio's built-in Image Asset Studio to quickly help you create icons of different sizes that meet the material design guidelines. You can test your round icons on the Google APIs emulator for API Level 25, which includes support for round icons and the new Google Pixel Launcher.

If you're adding image keyboard support, you can use the Messenger and Google Keyboard apps included in the preview system images for testing as they include support for this new API.

Scale your tests using Firebase Test Lab for Android

To help scale your testing, make sure to take advantage of Firebase Test Lab for Android and run your tests in the cloud at no charge during the preview period on all virtual devices including the Developer Preview 2 (API 25). You can use the automated crawler (Robo Test) to test your app without having to write any test scripts, or you can upload your own instrumentation (e.g. Espresso) tests. You can upload your tests here.

Publish your apps to alpha, beta or production channels in Google Play

After you've finished final testing, you can publish your updates compiled against, and optionally targeting, API 25 to Google Play. You can publish to your alpha, beta, or even production channels in the Google Play Developer Console. In this way, push your app updates to users whose devices are running Android 7.1, such as Pixel and Android Beta devices.

Get Developer Preview 2 on Your Eligible Device

If you have an eligible device that's already enrolled in the Android Beta Program, the device will get the Developer Preview 2 update over the coming week. No action is needed on your part. If you aren't yet enrolled in program, the easiest way to get started is by visiting android.com/beta and opt-in your eligible Android phone or tablet -- you'll soon receive this preview update over-the-air. As always, you can also download and flash this update manually.

As mentioned above, this Developer Preview update is available for Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, and Pixel C devices.

We're expecting to launch the final release of the Android 7.1.1 in just a few weeks Starting in December, we'll roll out Android 7.1.1 to the full lineup of supported preview devices, as well as the recently launched Pixel and Pixel XL devices. At that time, we'll also push the sources to AOSP, so our device manufacturer partners can bring this new platform update to consumers on their devices.

Meanwhile, we continue to welcome your feedback in the Developer Preview issue tracker, N Preview Developer community, or Android Beta community as we work towards the final consumer release in December!

Posted by Matteo Vallone, Google Play Games Business Development

To build awareness of the awesome innovation and art that indie game developers are bringing to users on Google Play, we have invested heavily over the past year in programs like Indie Corner, as well as events like the Google Play Indie Games Festivals in North America and Korea.

As part of that sustained effort, we also want to celebrate the passion and innovation of indie game developers with the introduction of the first-ever Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe. The contest will recognize the best indie talent in several countries and offer prizes that will help you get your game noticed by industry experts and gamers worldwide.

Prizes for the finalists and winners:

• An open showcase held at the Saatchi Gallery in London
• YouTube influencer campaigns worth up to 100,000 EUR
• Premium placements on Google Play
• Tickets to Google I/O 2017 and other top industry events
• Promotions on our channels
• Special prizes for the best Unity game
• And more!

Entering the contest:

If you're based in Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France (coming soon), Germany, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Poland (coming soon), Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, or UK (excl. Northern Ireland), have 15 or less full time employees, and published a new game on Google Play after 1 January 2016, you may now be eligible to enter the contest. If you're planning on publishing a new game soon, you can also enter by submitting a private beta. Check out all the details in the terms and conditions. Submissions close on 31 December 2016.

The process:

Up to 20 finalists will get to showcase their games at an open event at the Saatchi Gallery in London on the 16th February 2017. At the event, the top 10 will be selected by the event attendees and the Google Play team. The top 10 will then get the opportunity to pitch to a jury of industry experts, from which the final winner and runners up will be selected.

Even if someone is NOT entering the contest:

Even if you're not eligible to enter the contest, you can still register to attend the final showcase event in London on 16 February 2017, check out some great indie games, and have fun with various industry experts and indie developers. We will also be hosting a workshop for all indie games developers from across EMEA in the new Google office in Kings Cross the next day, so this will be a packed week.

Get started:

Enter the Indie Games Contest now and visit the contest site to find out more about the contest, the event, and the workshop.

Version 10.0.0 of the Google Play services client libraries, as well as the Firebase client libraries for Android, will be the last version of these libraries that support Android API level 9 (Android 2.3, Gingerbread). The next scheduled release of these libraries, version 10.2.0, will increase the minimum supported API level from 9 to 14 (Android 4.0.1, Ice Cream Sandwich). This change will happen in early 2017.

Why are we discontinuing support for Gingerbread and Honeycomb in Google Play services?

The Gingerbread platform is almost six years old. Many Android developers have already discontinued support for Gingerbread in their apps. This helps them build better apps that make use of the newer capabilities of the Android platform. For us, the situation is the same. By making this change, we will be able to provide a more robust collection of tools for Android developers with greater speed.

What this means for your Android app that uses Google Play services or Firebase:

You may use version 10.0.0 of Google Play services and Firebase as you are currently. It will continue to work with Gingerbread devices as it has in the past.

When you choose to upgrade to the future version 10.2.0, and if your app minimally supports API level 14 or greater (typically specified as "minSdkVersion" in your build.gradle), you will not encounter any versioning problems. However, if your app supports lower than API level 14, you will encounter a problem at build time with an error that looks like this:

Error:Execution failed for task ':app:processDebugManifest'.
> Manifest merger failed : uses-sdk:minSdkVersion 9 cannot be smaller than version 14 declared in library [com.google.android.gms:play-services:10.2.0]
        Suggestion: use tools:overrideLibrary="com.google.android.gms:play_services" to force usage

Unfortunately, the stated suggestion will not help you successfully run your app on older devices. In order to use Google Play services 10.2.0 and later, you can choose one of the following options:

1. Target API level 14 as the minimum supported API level.

This is the recommended course of action. To discontinue support for API levels that will no longer receive Google Play services updates, simply increase the minSdkVersion value in your app's build.gradle to at least 14. If you update your app in this way and publish it to the Play Store, users of devices with less than that level of support will not be able to see or download the update. However, they will still be able to download and use the most recently published version of the app that does target their device.

A very small percentage of all Android devices are using API levels less than 14. You can read more about the current distribution of Android devices. We believe that many of these old devices are not actively being used.

If your app still has a significant number of users on older devices, you can use multiple APK support in Google Play to deliver an APK that uses Google Play services 10.0.0. This is described below.

2. Build multiple APKs to support devices with an API level less than 14.

Along with some configuration and code management, you can build multiple APKs that support different minimum API levels, with different versions of Google Play services. You can accomplish this with build variants in Gradle. First, define build flavors for legacy and newer versions of your app. For example, in your build.gradle, define two different product flavors, with two different compile dependencies for the components of Play Services you're using:

productFlavors {
    legacy {
        minSdkVersion 9
        versionCode 901  // Min API level 9, v01
    }
    current {
        minSdkVersion 14
        versionCode 1401  // Min API level 14, v01
    }
}

dependencies {
    legacyCompile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:10.0.0'
    currentCompile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:10.2.0'
}

In the above situation, there are two product flavors being built against two different versions of the Google Play services client libraries. This will work fine if only APIs are called that are available in the 10.0.0 library. If you need to call newer APIs made available with 10.2.0, you will have to create a compatibility library for the newer API calls so that they are only built into the version of the application that can use them:

• Declare a Java interface that exposes the higher-level functionality you want to perform that is only available in current versions of Play services.
• Build two Android libraries that implement that interface. The "current" implementation should call the newer APIs as desired. The "legacy" implementation should no-op or otherwise act as desired with older versions of Play services. The interface should be added to both libraries.
• Conditionally compile each library into the app using "legacyCompile" and "currentCompile" dependencies.
• In the app's code, call through to the compatibility library whenever newer Play APIs are required.

After building a release APK for each flavor, you then publish them both to the Play Store, and the device will update with the most appropriate version for that device. Read more about multiple APK support in the Play Store.

Encryption protects your data if your phone falls into someone else's hands. The new Google Pixel and Pixel XL are encrypted by default to offer strong data protection, while maintaining a great user experience with high I/O performance and long battery life. In addition to encryption, the Pixel phones debuted running the Android Nougat release, which has even more security improvements.

This blog post covers the encryption implementation on Google Pixel devices and how it improves the user experience, performance, and security of the device.

File-Based Encryption Direct Boot experience

One of the security features introduced in Android Nougat was file-based encryption. File-based encryption (FBE) means different files are encrypted with different keys that can be unlocked independently. FBE also separates data into device encrypted (DE) data and credential encrypted (CE) data.

Direct boot uses file-based encryption to allow a seamless user experience when a device reboots by combining the unlock and decrypt screen. For users, this means that applications like alarm clocks, accessibility settings, and phone calls are available immediately after boot.

Enhanced with TrustZone® security

Modern processors provide a means to execute code in a mode that remains secure even if the kernel is compromised. On ARM®-based processors this mode is known as TrustZone. Starting in Android Nougat, all disk encryption keys are stored encrypted with keys held by TrustZone software. This secures encrypted data in two ways:

• TrustZone enforces the Verified Boot process. If TrustZone detects that the operating system has been modified, it won't decrypt disk encryption keys; this helps to secure device encrypted (DE) data.
• TrustZone enforces a waiting period between guesses at the user credential, which gets longer after a sequence of wrong guesses. With 1624 valid four-point patterns and TrustZone's ever-growing waiting period, trying all patterns would take more than four years. This improves security for all users, especially those who have a shorter and more easily guessed pattern, PIN, or password.

Encryption on Pixel phones

Protecting different folders with different keys required a distinct approach from full-disk encryption (FDE). The natural choice for Linux-based systems is the industry-standard eCryptFS. However, eCryptFS didn't meet our performance requirements. Fortunately one of the eCryptFS creators, Michael Halcrow, worked with the ext4 maintainer, Ted Ts'o, to add encryption natively to ext4, and Android became the first consumer of this technology. ext4 encryption performance is similar to full-disk encryption, which is as performant as a software-only solution can be.

Additionally, Pixel phones have an inline hardware encryption engine, which gives them the ability to write encrypted data at line speed to the flash memory. To take advantage of this, we modified ext4 encryption to use this hardware by adding a key reference to the bio structure, within the ext4 driver before passing it to the block layer. (The bio structure is the basic container for block I/O in the Linux kernel.) We then modified the inline encryption block driver to pass this to the hardware. As with ext4 encryption, keys are managed by the Linux keyring. To see our implementation, take a look at the source code for the Pixel kernel.

While this specific implementation of file-based encryption using ext4 with inline encryption benefits Pixel users, FBE is available in AOSP and ready to use, along with the other features mentioned in this post.

Android Studio 2.2 launched recently with many new and improved features. Some of the changes are easy to miss because they happened under the hood in the Android Gradle plugin, such as the newly rewritten integrated APK packaging and signing step.

APK Signature Scheme v2

With the introduction of the new APK Signature Scheme v2 in Android 7.0 Nougat, we decided to rewrite how assembling APKs works in the Android Gradle plugin. You can read all about the low-level technical details of v2 signatures in the documentation, but here's a quick tl;dr summary of the info you need as an Android app developer:

• The cryptographic signature of the APK that is used to verify its integrity is now located immediately before the ZIP Central Directory.
• The signature is computed and verified over the binary contents of the whole APK file, as opposed to decompressed file contents of each file in the archive in v1.
• An APK can be signed by both v1 and v2 signatures at the same time, so it remains backwards compatible with previous Android releases.

Why introduce this change to how Android verifies APKs? Firstly, for enhanced security and extensibility of this new signing format, and secondly for performance - the new signatures take significantly less time to verify on the device (no need for costly decompression), resulting in faster app installation times.

The consequence of this new signing scheme, however, is that there are new constraints on the APK creation process. Since only uncompressed file contents were verified in v1, that allowed for quite a lot of modifications to be made after APK signing - files could be moved around or even recompressed. In fact, the zipalign tool which was part of the build process did exactly that - it was used to align ZIP entries on correct byte boundaries for improved runtime performance.

Because v2 signatures verify all bytes in the archive and not individual ZIP entries, running zipalign is no longer possible after signing. That's why compression, aligning and signing now happens in a single, integrated step of the build process.

If you have any custom tasks in your build process that involve tampering with or post-processing the APK file in any way, please make sure you disable them or you risk invalidating the v2 signature and thus making your APKs incompatible with Android 7.0 and above.

Should you choose to do signing and aligning manually (such as from the command line), we offer a new tool in the Android SDK, called apksigner, that provides both v1 and v2 APK signing and verification. Note that you need to run zipalign before running apksigner if you are using v2 signatures. Also remember the jarsigner tool from the JDK is not compatible with Android v2 signatures, so you can't use it to re-sign your APKs if you want to retain the v2 signature.

In case you want to disable adding v1 or v2 signatures when building with the Android Gradle plugin, you can add these lines to your signingConfig section in build.gradle:

v1SigningEnabled false
v2SigningEnabled false

Note: both signing schemes are enabled by default in Android Gradle plugin 2.2.

Release builds for smaller APKs

We took this opportunity when rewriting the packager to make some optimizations to the size of release APKs, resulting in faster downloads, smaller delta updates on the Play Store, and less wasted space on the device. Here are some of the changes we made:

• Files in the archive are now sorted to minimize differences between APK builds.
• All file timestamps and metadata are zeroed out.
• Level 6 and level 9 compression is checked for all files in parallel and the optimal one is used, i.e. if L9 provides little benefit in terms of size, then L6 may be chosen for better performance
• Native libraries are stored uncompressed and page aligned in the APK. This brings support for the android:extractNativeLibs="false" option from Android 6.0 Marshmallow and lets applications use less space on the device as well as generate smaller updates on the Play Store
• Zopfli compression is not used to better support Play Store update algorithms. It is not recommended to recompress your APKs with Zopfli. Pre-optimizing individual resources such as PNG files in your projects is still fine and recommended.

These changes help make your releases as small as possible so that users can download and update your app even on a slower connection or on less capable devices. But what about debug builds?

Debug builds for installation speed

When developing apps you want to keep the iteration cycle fast - change code, build, and deploy on a connected device or emulator. Since Android Studio 2.0 we've been working to make all the steps as fast as possible. With Instant Run we're now able to update only the changed code and resources during runtime, while the new Emulator brings multi-processor support and faster ADB speeds for quicker APK transfer and installation. Build improvements can cut that time even further and in Android Studio 2.2 we're introducing incremental packaging and parallel compression for debug builds. Together with other features like selectively packaging resources for the target device density and ABI this will make your development even faster.

A word of caution: the APK files created for Instant Run or by invoking a debug build are not meant for distribution on the Play Store! They contain additional instrumentation code for Instant Run and are missing resources for device configurations other than the one that was connected when you started the build. Make sure you only distribute release versions of the APK which you can create using the Android Studio Generate Signed APK command or the assembleRelease Gradle task.

The TV Input Framework (TIF) on Android TV makes it easy for third-party app developers to create their own TV channels with any type of linear media. It introduces a new way for apps to engage with users with a high-quality channel surfing experience, and it gives users a single interface to browse and watch all of their channels.

To help developers get started with building TV channels, we have created the TV Input Framework Companion Library, which includes a number of helper methods and classes to make the development process as easy as possible.

This library provides standard classes to set up a background task that updates the program guide and an interface that helps integrate your media player with the playback controller, as well as supports the new TV Recording APIs that are available in Android Nougat. It includes everything you need to start showing your content on your Android TV's live TV app.

(Note: source from android-tv-sample-inputs sample)

To get started, take a look at the sample app and documentation. The sample demonstrates how to extend this library to create custom channels and manage video playback. Developers can immediately get started with the sample app by updating the XMLTV file with their own content or dynamically creating channels in the SampleJobService.

You can include this library in your app by copying the library directory from the sample into your project root directory. Then, add the following to your project's settings.gradle file:

include ':library'

In your app's build.gradle file, add the following to your dependencies:

compile project(':library')

Android TV continues to grow, and whether your app has on-demand or live media, TIF is a great way to keep users engaged with your content. One partner for example, Haystack TV, recently integrated TIF into their app and it now accounts for 16% of watch time for new users on Android TV.

Check out our TV developer site to learn more about Android TV, and join our developer community on Google+ at g.co/androidtvdev to discuss this library and other topics with TV developers.

In addition to supporting the experimental Gradle plugin, Android Studio 2.2 enables you to build C/C++ components of Android projects using CMake and ndk-build.

The Android Studio team plans to continue to support the experimental Gradle plugin. This will eventually replace the current Gradle plugin, providing additional tightly-integrated benefits to C/C++ developers such as smarter dependency management. So if you're interested in someday having the smartest possible interface between your IDE and your build system, you shouldn't ignore the experimental plugin.

CMake and ndk-build are useful alternatives to Gradle in several cases:

• Projects that are already using CMake or ndk-build, such as legacy Eclipse ndk projects
• Projects that are unable to assume the risk of using an experimental plugin for their C/C++ builds
• Projects that will share a C/C++ build system across multiple platforms
• C/C++ projects that need to use advanced features currently unavailable in experimental Gradle such as NEON support

For new projects, we recommend using CMake or experimental Gradle. For new Android projects with limited C++, we recommend trying the experimental Gradle plugin. For projects with substantial amounts of C++, or where you want the maximally stable build configuration, we recommend using a CMake build. Android Studio intends CMake to be a permanently supported solution.

While we think that there are substantial advantages to having a single build system able to handle all parts of an Android application, stabilizing the experimental plugin is not an option for us because it relies on Gradle APIs that are still a work in progress. Until the Gradle APIs are stabilized, the experimental plugin will keep changing, particularly in its Domain Specific Language, and will be strictly tied to a very specific version of Gradle itself.

Note that the the old, undocumented ndkCompile integration is deprecated. If you are using it, you need to move away from it as we'll remove it completely in the near future. We recommend migrating to gradle+cmake via our migration guide.

Migrating from Eclipse to Android Studio

We no longer support the Eclipse ADT. To get started migrating, download and install Android Studio. For most projects, migration is as simple as importing your existing Eclipse ADT projects in Android Studio with the File → New→ Import Project menu option. For more details on the migration process, check out the migration guide.

Feedback and Open Source Contributions

We're dedicated to making Android Studio the best possible integrated development environment for building Android apps, so if there are missing features or other challenges preventing you from using Android Studio, we want to hear about it [please take our survey]. You can also file bugs or feature requests directly with the team, and let us know via our Twitter or Google+ accounts.

Android Studio is an open source project, available to all at no cost. Check out our Open Source project page if you're interested in contributing or learning more.

To deliver the best user experience right out of the gate, Firebase Test Lab for Android allows you to test your apps and ensure their compatibility with multiple device configurations, across OS versions, screen orientations, and locales. With a single click, you can run your tests on hundreds of device configurations in Google Cloud and receive your results quickly.

Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of the Android 7.1 Developer Preview on Firebase Test Lab virtual devices. In addition to testing the Android 7.1 Developer Preview on your physical Android Device with the Android Beta program, or on your local Android Emulator, you can use the Firebase Test Lab to scale your app testing to hundreds of Android virtual devices.

You can also use Firebase Test Lab to perform your own testing. If you don’t have any test scripts, Robo test is ideal for doing your basic compatibility testing on the new platform. It crawls your app in an attempt to find crashes. You can also use the Espresso Test Recorder in Android Studio to record your own instrumentation tests without writing any code.

From now until the end of December (12/31/2016), Firebase Test Lab will be offered at no charge on the Firebase Blaze plan for all virtual devices, to help you ensure the compatibility of your app with the Android 7.1 Developer Preview release, as well as with other Android releases.

Prepare your app for API level 25, then go to the Firebase Test Lab console to run your first test.

Happy testing!

Robo tests uncovering a crash on Android 7.1 Developer Preview for the Flood-It! app.

Almost three years ago, we started the first of an ongoing series of developer events, called Playtime, dedicated to educating partners on best practices and tools available to improve their apps and games and grow successful businesses on Google Play. It was originally a modest gathering that was held on our campus in Mountain View, CA, but it has quickly grown to become one our premier developer events of the year (outside of Google I/O) with a huge global footprint. We've already been in London, Paris, Berlin, San Paulo, New Delhi, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Seoul and more, just to meet directly with developers.

Today, Playtime is back in San Francisco after a long international run! On stage, we'll recap some of our recent efforts to invest in new areas that go beyond the smartphone, as well as announce new tools and highlight the major progress of recently launched features that help developers increase user engagement and make more money.

Extending beyond mobile devices

We live in a multiscreen world and people want to enjoy Android apps on the their phones, and many other devices. That's why we have been extending Google Play to go beyond the smartphone, enabling new app and gaming experiences while on the go, on a chromebook, in the living room and immersed in virtual reality.

The new Daydream device platform is going to be available soon and will come with a Google Play Store filled with high quality VR apps. Android Apps are now available in beta on a few Chromebook devices (same Android apps that currently run on phones and tablets). And we recently announced a developer preview of Android Wear 2.0 which introduced Google Play for Wear. This makes it easier for users to discover and install great apps that work directly on the watch.

Enhanced developer tools and programs

We continue to deliver the best tools for developers in the Play Developer Console to drive user engagement and increase revenue.

Offer new subscription promos

We know how important subscriptions are in helping you monetize and we're continuing to invest in features to support your subscription business. Subscriptions are the fastest growing business model on Play, with consumer spending in subscription apps increasing 10x over the last 3 years. Coming soon, you'll be able to create an introductory price for new subscribers for a set period of time. For example, you can offer a subscription for $1 per month for the first three months before the normal subscription price kicks in. Along with local/custom pricing and free trials already offered, introductory pricing will help you acquire more subscribers and grow your subscription business.

Build anticipation with pre-registration

Earlier this year, we started working with select developer to let users pre-register for major upcoming Android titles, such as Clash Royale (Supercell), and Candy Crush Jelly Saga (King), which has driven more than 30 million installs so far. With pre-registration, users simply tap the 'pre-register' icon to show their interest. The process automatically sets up an alert that prompts a user once the app is available. The program is limited at this time.

Get feedback early with Early Access

In only a few short months, more developers have been leveraging the "Early Access" open beta program to build a user base, interact with early-adopter users and get invaluable feedback before an official launch. It has been an immediate hit! Since the collection became available to all users, open beta titles have been installed over 4 million times (up from 1 million in September) and demand is growing. If you are a developer getting ready to launch on Google Play, you can nominate your app or game to be part of Early Access. Learn more here.

Recognizing art and innovation from Indies

To build awareness of the awesome innovation and art that indie game developers are bringing to users on Google Play, we have invested heavily over the past year in programs like Indie Corner, as well as industry events like the Google Play Indie Games Festival in North America. The new Indie Corner collection, in particular, has already helped million of gamers discover the latest and most innovative releases on Google Play. Developer can nominate indie game for inclusion at g.co/indiecornersubmission. We'll pick the best games to showcase based on the quality of the experience and exemplary use of Google Play game services.

Ensuring fair play for everyone

Our goal is always to do the right thing for both users and developers. As game economies have become more complex, developers are looking for more tools to ensure that all users play fairly to make gameplay fun for everyone. Today, we are announcing a new API (in beta) that helps developers identify users who have requested refunds so they can better manage their economies. This program is currently in early beta and interested developers can sign up to learn more here.

It has been another great year for Google Play thanks to the continued feedback and support from the developer community.

With the release of Android Studio 2.2, the time has now come to say goodbye to the Eclipse Android Developer Tools. We have formally ended their support and development. There's never been a better time to switch to Android Studio and experience the improvements we've made to the Android development workflow.

Android Studio

What's New in Android Studio 2.2

Android Studio 2.2 builds on the great features from Android Studio 2.0. There are over twenty new features that improve development whether you are designing, iterating, or testing. Notable changes include:

• Instant Run - The super-fast iteration engine now is both more reliable and available for more types of changes
• Layout Editor - The new user interface designer that makes it easier than ever to create beautiful app experiences
• Constraint Layout - A new flexible layout engine for building dynamic user interfaces - designed to work with the new layout editor
• C++ Support - CMake and ndk-build are now supported alongside improved editing and debug experiences
• APK Analyzer - Inspects APKs to help you streamline your APK and debug multi-dex issues
• GPU Debugger (beta) - Captures a stream of OpenGL ES commands and replays them with GPU state inspection
• Espresso Test Recorder (beta) - Records interactions with your app and outputs UI test code

For our ADT Fans

All of your favorite ADT tools are now part of Android Studio, including DDMS, Trace Viewer, Network Monitor, and CPU Monitor. We've also improved Android Studio's accessibility, including keyboard navigation enhancements and screen reader support.

We announced that we were ending development and official support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) in Eclipse at the end of 2015, including the Eclipse ADT plugin and Android Ant build system. With the latest updates to Studio, we've completed the transition.

Migrating to Android Studio

To get started, download and install Android Studio. For most developers, including those with C/C++ projects, migration is as simple as importing your existing Eclipse ADT projects in Android Studio with the File > New > Import Project menu option. For more details on the migration process, check out the migration guide.

Feedback and Open Source Contributions

We're dedicated to making Android Studio the best possible integrated development environment for building Android apps, so if there are missing features or other challenges preventing you from switching to Android Studio, we want to hear about it [survey] ! You can also file bugs or feature requests directly with the team, and let us know via our Twitter or Google+ accounts.

Android Studio is an open source project, available to all at no cost. Check out our Open Source project page if you're interested in contributing or learning more.

Core to our mission, we're always focused on the user and delivering the best experience possible. This same principle underlies how Google Play works with developers, as we aim to provide you with best experience working with us and our products. We can only do this through understanding what you need and how we can improve. We ran our first Developer Sentiment Survey in July this year, and heard feedback from over 4,000 developers across 15 countries. This bi-annual survey gathers feedback at scale from the thousands of developers around the world who publish their apps and games on Google Play. While it was great to hear how Google Play is working for you, we also learned how we should improve to enable you to build even more successful businesses.

This month, you may receive an email from Google Play inviting you to participate in the next Google Play Developer Sentiment Survey. This invitation is sent to a selection developers who have opted in to receive Research contacts in the Developer Console, or to those who are directly managed by Google. You can review and update your preferences in the Developer Console to ensure you get the opportunity to be invited to participate in future surveys.

In this survey we ask you to give us feedback across a number of areas:

• Develop: Testing, publishing and launching your app or game.
• Grow: Discovery and marketing of your app or game.
• Engage: Distributing to and engaging with your target market.
• Earn: Pricing and Payment methods.
• Getting Support: Accessing the information and support you need when you have a question.

We use your feedback to decide what we need to focus on next to help you grow your app or game business. Initiatives announced at I/O 2016, such as improved betas, prelaunch reporting, the Developer Console app, and pricing templates, were all developed in response to feedback from developers like you.

If you do receive an invitation to participate in this survey, we really appreciate you taking the time to complete it. We value your feedback and want to act on it to help you create apps and games that delight your users, and help you build a successful business anywhere in the world.

We strive to continuously make Google Play the best platform for enjoying and discovering the most innovative and trusted apps. Today we are announcing additional enhancements to protect the integrity of the store.

Our teams work every day to improve the quality of our discovery systems. These content discovery systems ensure that users can find and download apps they will love. From time to time, we observe instances of developers attempting to manipulate the placement of their apps through illegitimate means like fraudulent installs, fake reviews, and incentivized ratings. These attempts not only violate the Google Play Developer Policy, but also harm our community of developers by hindering their chances of being discovered or recommended through our systems. Ultimately, they put the end users at risk of making wrong decisions based on inaccurate, unauthentic information.

Today we are rolling out improved detection and filtering systems to combat such manipulation attempts. If an install is conducted with the intention to manipulate an app's placement on Google Play, our systems will detect and filter it. Furthermore, developers who continue to exhibit such behaviors could have their apps taken down from Google Play.

In the vast majority of cases, no action will be needed. If you are asking someone else to promote your app (e.g., third-party marketing agency), we advise you to make sure that the promotion is based on legitimate practices. In case of questions, please check out the Developer Support Resources.

These important changes will help protect the integrity of Google Play, our developer community, and ultimately our end user. Thank you for your support in building the world's most trusted store for apps and games!

Readfeed was created to help book lovers around the world share and discuss their favorite reads with each other more easily. Today, we are excited to officially launch the Readfeed app on Google Play. As one of the first online book clubs available only on Android devices, Readfeed lets you create your virtual bookshelf by adding books to custom lists, track and share your reading progress with community members, and see what books others are reading and talking about.

Readfeed has come a long way since we first released the app as beta in Google Play's Early Access program. As one of the first graduates of the beta program, we were able to solicit feature requests, identify bugs, locate new and optimize existing target markets, as well as build a sizable reader community. This allowed Readfeed to deliver the best possible experience right out of the gate.

As a guest on this blog, we thought it would be helpful to share some important best practices that we learned from the Early Access program to improve your products and scale your user base.

Harnessing Feedback Loops

One of the core principles underlying the construction of any successful product is setting up an effective feedback loop between users and product creators. Google Play Early access does this automatically. Users show up (sometimes seemingly out of nowhere), install the app, and leave feedback in the Beta Feedback section of the developer console. We can then reply in that section or take the conversation into an email, address the issue, and email users when it's addressed. Many improvements to Readfeed have been made as a direct result of this process.

Identifying New Target Markets

One major benefit of Early Access was that it gave us immediate access to a worldwide audience of readers. We were able to quickly assess the different book-related markets that existed based on user feedback and interviews done through email. Since launched in beta, over 1000 people have asked to read free books. Apparently this need exists in third-world countries and we plan to add this functionality in a future release.

Identifying Bugs

Bugs plague any app in its early stages. Because of the variety of devices that Early Access users have, ranging from Android 4.2 rooted devices to the latest Nexus phones, we were able to identify bugs very quickly. For instance, on Android 4.2 there was a recurrent crash which was tough for me to identify with my own devices. After one user emailed me about it, I was able to gather enough information to resolve the issue and put out an update immediately.

Identifying New Features

Google Play Early Access made it a lot easier to determine what to do next. When about 10 people request a feature, we know it's immediately important and put it in the app. One feature that came directly from Early Access feedback was the ability to rate books without leaving a review.

Community Building

Early Access has allowed us to start building a community. For instance, a Software tester from the UK who likes books sent me a detailed analysis of all of Readfeed's bugs. Also, we've witnessed many people take the initiative and answer others' questions about the app. Because of the critical mass that Google Play Early Access helps you build, it's easy for communities to form and start sharing information with each other.

A/B Testing

We now have enough users to A/B test certain parts of the app and get statistically significant results. This is something that usually takes a long time to achieve.

There are many other ways Google Play Early Access have helped us, and we're thankful that Readfeed has had the opportunity to be a part of the program. I can say without reservation that our current and future product would be in a very different place had it not been for our inclusion in Early Access.

(Originally published on Android Central)

It's an exciting time to be a health & fitness app developer. With people shelling out on fitness more than ever before, we're seeing record high levels of gym memberships and attendance, the rise of boutique fitness, and an emphasis on connected devices.

Paramount to this growth is the integration of smart technology. Whether it be through streaming video, wearables, or mobile apps, technology empowers us with instant access to high quality workouts, sensor biofeedback, and endless on-demand inspiration. At Google Play, we've seen this growth reflected by the incredible popularity of health & fitness apps. In fact, this is one of Google Play's fastest growing app categories, boasting the most engaged 30d active users.

As the resident health & fitness expert on Google Play, I had the opportunity to speak about what's driving the category's growth at the recent Wearables Technology Show. Here are the top three recommendations I shared with the audience to help coach developers towards building more valuable app experiences:

Lose it!

#1: Be invisible

Freeletics

#2: Be personal

Glow

#3: Be assistive

At the end of the day, changing health and fitness habits is hard. Make it easier for your users by seamlessly guiding them on what they personally need to do to achieve their goal. It's that simple ;) We encourage you to experiment with these exercises to get your app fit for the millions of Android users looking to live a healthier, happier life.

Interested in growing your app on a global scale? See how two app developers localized their apps in unique ways to drive revenue and user engagement.

drupe

drupe is a communications app that utilizes the openness of android to build a truly native experience delivering highly contextual recommendations to their users across the world.

Key to achieving international growth, drupe has translated their app in 17 languages, and their store listing page in 28 languages. This led to an increase in conversion and retention rates. Additionally, when entering India, the team noticed several user reviews requesting integration with a specific messaging app widely used in the Indian market. Through a combination of this integration, adding Hindi language translation, and other new features, drupe saw improved performance. In six months, daily active users increased 300%, and actions per average daily user increased 25% in the Indian market.

Noom

In addition to translating their app and store listing page, Noom conducted extensive analysis to determine the right financial model tailored to each international market. This included evaluation of their competitive landscape and local health and wellness spending behavior, in addition to running pricing experiments to determine the optimal offering between subscriptions, IAPs, or a premium app.

Use the Localization Checklist to learn more about tailoring your app for different markets to drive installs and revenue, and to create a better overall user experience. Also, get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date on new features and learn best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

Read the full articles for drupe and Noom.

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

A couple of weeks ago we announced that a developer preview of Android 7.1 Nougat was on the way. You can get started with this new release today by downloading the SDK and tools. To get the 7.1 release on your eligible device, enroll your device in the Android Beta program. If your device is already enrolled, you'll receive the update automatically.

What’s in the Developer Preview?

The Android 7.1 Developer Preview gives you everything you need to test your app on the new platform or extend it with new features like app shortcuts and image keyboard support. It includes an updated SDK and tools, documentation and samples, as well as emulators and device system images for running your apps on supported devices.

We’re continuing the model we used in N and earlier releases, and with Android 7.1 being an incremental release there are a few differences to highlight:

• Since 7.1 has already launched on Pixel, we’re delivering the initial Developer Preview at beta quality for the Nexus lineup of devices. The goal is to tease out any device-specific issues.
• We’ve finalized the new APIs as API Level 25
• We’ve opened up publishing on Google Play for apps targeting the new API level, so you can update your apps soon as you are ready.

After the initial preview release, we plan to deliver an update in November followed by the final public release to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) in December. Initially available on Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, and Pixel C devices, we’ll extend the Developer Preview to other devices in November.

Get your apps ready for Android 7.1

To get started, update to Android Studio 2.2.2 and download API Level 25 platform, emulator system images and tools. The final API Level 25 SDK is available for download through the SDK Manager in Android Studio.

Once you’ve installed the API Level 25 SDK, you can update your project’s compileSdkVersion to 25 to build and test against the new APIs. If you’re doing compatibility testing, we recommend updating your app’s targetSdkVersion to 25 to test your app with compatibility behaviors disabled. For details on how to set up your app with the API Level 25 SDK, see Set up the Preview.

If you’re adding app shortcuts or circular launcher icons to your app, you can use Android Studio’s built-in Image Asset Studio to quickly help you create icons of different sizes that meet the material design guidelines.

The Google APIs Emulator System images shipped with the Android API Level 25 SDK include support for round icons and the new Google Pixel Launcher. The Google API system image allows you to test how your app’s circular app icons look in devices that support circular icons. Also, if you are developing live wallpapers, you can also use the the new system images with the Android Emulator to test the enhanced preview metadata in Android 7.1.

To help you add image keyboard support, you can use the Messenger and Google Keyboard apps included in the preview system images for testing as they include support for this new API.

Along with the API Level 25 SDK, we have also updated the Android Support Library to 25.0.0. The new version lets you add image keyboard support with compatibility back to API level 13. It also introduces BottomNavigationView widget, which implements the bottom navigation pattern from the material design guidelines.

For details on API Level 25 check out the API diffs and the updated API reference on the developer preview site.

You can use the Android Emulator in Android Studio to test your circular app icons & shortcuts in a launcher

You can use the Image Asset tool to quickly create circular icon assets.

Publish your apps to alpha, beta or production channels in Google Play

Since the Android 7.1 APIs are final, you can publish updates compiling with, and optionally targeting, API 25 to Google Play. You can now publish app updates that use API 25 to your alpha, beta, or even production channels in the Google Play Developer Console. In this way, push your app updates to users whose devices are running Android 7.1, such as Pixel and Android Beta devices.

How to Get Android 7.1 Developer Preview on Your Eligible Device

If you are already enrolled in the Android Beta program, then your eligible enrolled devices will get the Android 7.1 Developer Preview update right away, no action is needed on your part. If you aren’t yet enrolled in Android Beta, the easiest way to get started is to visit android.com/beta and opt-in your eligible Android phone or tablet -- you’ll soon receive this (and later) preview updates over-the-air. If you have an enrolled device and do not want to receive the update, just visit Android Beta and unenroll the device. You can also download and flash this update manually.

We welcome your feedback in the Developer Preview issue tracker, N Preview Developer community, or Android Beta community as we work towards the consumer release in December!

Today we have released a new video ‘10 tips to stay on the right side of Google Play policy’. The video provides 10 best practices to help you develop and launch apps and games which follow Google Play’s Developer Program Policies.

It accompanies the recently published News video series and is part of our 10 tips for success on Google Play video series.

Watch the video to learn how to review your app, to ensure you have appropriate content and the rights to use it, how to handle user data, and more. Also, find out how to stay up to date with policy updates and get support from our policy team.

You can also find more resources on Google Play policies in the Developer Policy Center, and also get the new Playbook for Developers app to learn more best practices to find success on Google Play.

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 Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Today, we’re taking the wraps off of Android 7.1 Nougat, the latest version of the platform. You probably saw a sneak peek of it at last week’s event. It’s an incremental update based on Android 7.0 but includes new features for consumers and developers — from platform Daydream VR support and A/B system updates to app shortcuts and image keyboard support.

We’ve already been working closely with device makers to get them ready for Android 7.1, and next we’ll give you access to this update so you can start getting your apps ready.

Later this month we’ll be bringing you the Android 7.1 platform as an open Developer Preview, similar to what we did for Android 7.0. You’ll be able to test and build on the new platform and try the latest features.

As always, we’ll deliver the Developer Preview through the Android Beta program, which makes it incredibly easy to participate.

What’s in Android 7.1?

Android 7.1 delivers the productivity, security, and performance of Android 7.0, along with a variety of optimizations and bug fixes, features, and new APIs (API level 25).

For developers, Android 7.1 adds new capabilities to help you drive engagement in your app and deliver an improved user experience, such as:

• App shortcuts API — lets you surface key actions directly in the launcher and take your users deep into your app instantly. You can create up to 5 shortcuts, either statically or dynamically.
• Circular app icons support — lets you provide great-looking rounded icon resources that match the look of Pixel and other launchers.
• Enhanced live wallpaper metadata — lets you provide metadata about your live wallpapers to any picker displaying the wallpapers as a preview. You can show existing metadata such as label, description, and author, as well as a new context URL and title to link to more information.

Android 7.1 also adds these much-requested developer features to the platform:

• Image keyboard support — expands the types of content that users can enter from their keyboards, letting them express themselves through custom stickers, animated gifs, and more. Apps can tell the keyboard what types of content they accept, and keyboards can deliver all of the images and other content that they offer to the user. For broad compatibility, this API will also be available in the support library.
• Storage manager Intent — lets an app take the user directly to a new Settings screen to clear unused files and free up storage space on the device.

For carriers and calling apps, the platform includes new APIs to support multi-endpoint calling and new telephony configuration options.

Image keyboard support: Let users input images and other content directly from a keyboard.

App shortcuts: Use app shortcuts to surface key actions and take users deep into your app instantly.

Get your apps ready

Android 7.1 is an incremental release, but it’s always important to make sure your apps look and run great — especially as devices start to reach consumers.

The Android 7.1 Developer Preview will give you everything you need to test your apps or extend them with new features like shortcuts or keyboard images. Included are the SDK with new APIs, build tools, documentation and samples, as well as emulators and device system images for running your apps on supported Nexus devices. We’ll also include a launcher and apps that support app shortcuts, and a keyboard and apps that support keyboard images.

If you want to receive the Developer Preview automatically, visit Android Beta and enroll your device. If you previously enrolled a device and haven’t unenrolled, your device will receive the update. If you already enrolled but don’t want to receive the update, visit Android Beta to unenroll the device as soon as possible.

Initially, we’ll offer the Developer Preview for Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, and Pixel C devices, extending to other supported devices by the end of the preview. At the final release of the Android 7.1.x platform, due in early December, we’ll roll out updates to the full lineup of supported devices — Nexus 6, 5X, 6P, 9, Player, Pixel C, and supported Android One devices — as well as Pixel and Pixel XL devices.

Coming to consumer devices soon

We’re working with our partners to bring Android 7.1 to devices in the ecosystem over the months ahead, so we recommend downloading the Android 7.1 Developer Preview as soon as it’s available. Test your apps for compatibility and optimize them to look their best, such as by providing circular app icons and adding app shortcuts.

Meanwhile, stay tuned, we’ll be sharing more details about the Developer Preview soon!

Papumba is an educational games developer based in Argentina, with a core team of four people and a vision to grow a global business.

Watch Gonzalo Rodriguez, CEO, and Andres Ballone, CFO, explain how working with a team of experts from across the world and adapting their games to local markets helped them find success globally.

Learn more about localized pricing and translation services to grow your app or game business globally on Google Play. Also, get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date on new features and learn best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

Today we’re launching the third developer preview of Android Wear 2.0 with a big new addition: Google Play on Android Wear. The Play Store app makes it easy for users to find and install apps directly on the watch, helping developers like you reach more users.

Play Store features

With Play Store for Android Wear, users can browse recommended apps in the home view and search for apps using voice, keyboard, handwriting, and recommended queries, so they can find apps more easily. Users can switch between multiple accounts, be part of alpha and beta tests, and update or uninstall apps in the “My apps” view on their watch, so they can manage apps more easily. Perhaps the coolest feature: If users want an app on their watch but not on their phone, they can install only the watch app. In fact, in Android Wear 2.0, phone apps are no longer necessary. You can now build and publish watch-only apps for users to discover on Google Play.

Why an on-watch store?

We asked developers like you what you wanted most out of Android Wear, and you told us you wanted to make it easier for users to discover apps. So we ran studies with users to find out where they expected and wanted to discover apps––and they repeatedly looked for and asked for a way to discover apps right on the watch itself. Along with improvements to app discovery on the phone and web, the Play Store on the watch helps users find apps right where they need them.

Publish your apps

To make your apps available on Play Store for Android Wear, just follow these steps. You’ll need to make sure your Android Wear 2.0 apps set minSdkVersion to 24 or higher, use the runtime permissions model, and are uploaded via multi-APK using the Play Developer Console. If your app supports Android Wear 1.0, the developer guide also covers the use of product flavors in Gradle.

Download the New Android Wear companion app

To set up Developer Preview 3, you’ll need to install a beta version of the Android Wear app on your phone, flash your watch to the latest preview release, and use the phone app to add a Google Account to your watch. These steps are detailed in Download and Test with a Device. If you don’t have a watch to test on, you can use the emulator as well.

• Complications improvements: Starting with Developer Preview 3, watch face developers will need to request RECEIVE_COMPLICATION_DATA permission before the watch face can receive complication data. We have added ComplicationHelperActivity to make this easier. In addition, watch face developers can now set default complications, including a selection of system data complications which do not require special permission (e.g. battery level and step count), as well as data providers that have whitelisted the watch face. Lastly, there are behavior changes related to ComplicationData to 1) help better differentiate various scenarios leading to “empty data” and 2) ease development by returning a default value for fields not supported by a complication type instead of throwing a runtime exception.
• New WearableRecyclerView: This new UI component helps developers display and manipulate vertical lists of items while optimizing for round displays.
• Inline Action for Notifications: A new API makes it easy to take action on a notification right from the stream. Developers can specify which action is displayed inline at the bottom of the notification by calling setHintDisplayActionInline:

  NotificationCompat.Action replyAction =
      new NotificationCompat.Action.Builder(R.drawable.ic_message_white_24dp,
              "Reply", replyPendingIntent)
              .addRemoteInput(remoteInput)
              .extend(new NotificationCompat.Action.WearableExtender()
                      .setHintDisplayActionInline(true))
              .build(); 

• Smart Reply: Android Wear now generates Smart Reply responses for MessagingStyle notifications. Smart Reply responses are generated by an entirely on-watch machine learning model using the context provided by the MessagingStyle notification, and no data is uploaded to the cloud to generate the responses.
• And much more: Read about the complete list of changes in the Android Wear developer preview release notes.
  
  Timeline

  We’ve gotten tons of great feedback from the developer community about Android Wear 2.0––thank you! We’ve decided to continue the preview program into early 2017, at which point the first watches will receive Android Wear 2.0. Please keep the feedback coming by filing bugs or posting in our Android Wear Developers community, and stay tuned for Android Wear Developer Preview 4.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/android-wear-2-0-developer-preview-3-play-store-and-more/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-the-winners-of-the-google-play-indie-games-festival-in-san-francisco-indie-games-contest-coming-soon-to-europe/ https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-the-winners-of-the-google-play-indie-games-festival-in-san-francisco-indie-games-contest-coming-soon-to-europe/#comments Tue, 27 Sep 2016 17:03:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=0760f41ab71fcc712e384d3bc0a6c055 Posted by Jamil Moledina, Google Play, Games Strategic Lead

  Last Saturday, we hosted the first Google Play Indie Games Festival in North America, where we showcased 30 amazing games that celebrate the passion, innovation, and art of indies. After a competitive round of voting from fans and on-stage presentations to a jury of industry experts, we recognized seven finalists nominees and three winners.

  
  Winners:

  	bit bit blocks Presented by Greg Batha Bit Bit Blocks is a cute and action-packed competitive puzzle game. Play with your friends on a single screen, or challenge yourself in single player mode. Head-to-head puzzle play anytime, anywhere.
  	Numbo Jumbo Presented by Kaveh Daryabeygi, Wombo Combo Numbo Jumbo is a casual mobile puzzle number game for iOS and Android. Players group numbers that add together: for example, [3, 5, 8] works because 3+5=8.
  	Orbit - Playing with Gravity Presented by Chetan Surpur & Eric Rahman, Highkey Games ORBIT puts a gravity simulator at the heart of a puzzle game. Launch planets with a flick of your finger, and try to get them into orbit around black holes. ORBIT also features a sandbox where you can create your own universes, control time, and paint with gravity.

  
  
  Finalist nominees:
  
  

  	Antihero [coming later in 2016] Presented by Tim Conkling Antihero is a "fast-paced strategy game with an (Oliver) Twist." Run a thieves' guild in a gas-lit, corrupt city. Recruit urchins, hire thugs, steal everything – and bribe, blackmail, and assassinate your opposition. Single-player and cross-platform multiplayer for desktops, tablets, and phones.
  	Armajet [coming later in 2016] Presented by Nicola Geretti & Alexander Krivicich, Super Bit Machine Armajet is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter that pits teams of players against each other in fast-paced jetpack combat. Armajet is a best in class mobile game designed for spectator-friendly competitive gaming for tablets and smartphones. Players compete in a modern arena shooter that’s easy to learn, but hard to master.
  	Norman's Night In: The Cave [coming later in 2016] Presented by Nick Iorfino & Alex Reed, Bactrian Games Norman's Night In is a 2D puzzle-platformer that tells the tale of Norman and his fateful fall into the world of cave. While test driving the latest model 3c Bowling Ball, Norman finds himself lost with nothing but his loaned bball and a weird feeling that somehow he was meant to be there.
  	Parallyzed Presented by David Fox, Double Coconut Parallyzed is an atmospheric adventure platformer with unique gameplay, set in a dark and enchanting dreamscape. You play twin sisters who have been cast into separate dimensions. Red and Blue have different attributes and talents, are deeply connected, and have the ability to swap bodies at any time.

  Finalists nominees and winners also received a range of prizes, including Google I/O 2017 tickets, a Tango Development kit, Google Cloud credits, an NVIDIA Android TV & K1 tablet, and a Razer Forge TV bundle.

  Indie Games Contest coming to Europe

  We’re continuing our effort to help indie game developers thrive by highlighting innovative and fun games for fans around the world. Today, we are announcing the Indie Games Contest for developers based in European countries (specific list of countries coming soon!). This is a great opportunity for indie games developers to win prizes that will help you showcase your art to industry experts and grow your business and your community of players worldwide. Make sure you don’t miss out on hearing the details by signing up here for updates.

  As we shared at the festival, it’s rewarding to see how Google Play has evolved over the years. We’re now reaching over 1 billion users every month and there’s literally something for everyone. From virtual reality to family indie games, developers like you continue to inspire, provoke, and innovate through beautiful, artistic games.

  
  ]]> Posted by Jamil Moledina, Google Play, Games Strategic Lead

  Last Saturday, we hosted the first Google Play Indie Games Festival in North America, where we showcased 30 amazing games that celebrate the passion, innovation, and art of indies. After a competitive round of voting from fans and on-stage presentations to a jury of industry experts, we recognized seven finalists nominees and three winners.

  
  Winners:

  	bit bit blocks Presented by Greg Batha Bit Bit Blocks is a cute and action-packed competitive puzzle game. Play with your friends on a single screen, or challenge yourself in single player mode. Head-to-head puzzle play anytime, anywhere.
  	Numbo Jumbo Presented by Kaveh Daryabeygi, Wombo Combo Numbo Jumbo is a casual mobile puzzle number game for iOS and Android. Players group numbers that add together: for example, [3, 5, 8] works because 3+5=8.
  	Orbit - Playing with Gravity Presented by Chetan Surpur & Eric Rahman, Highkey Games ORBIT puts a gravity simulator at the heart of a puzzle game. Launch planets with a flick of your finger, and try to get them into orbit around black holes. ORBIT also features a sandbox where you can create your own universes, control time, and paint with gravity.

  
  
  Finalist nominees:
  
  

  	Antihero [coming later in 2016] Presented by Tim Conkling Antihero is a "fast-paced strategy game with an (Oliver) Twist." Run a thieves' guild in a gas-lit, corrupt city. Recruit urchins, hire thugs, steal everything – and bribe, blackmail, and assassinate your opposition. Single-player and cross-platform multiplayer for desktops, tablets, and phones.
  	Armajet [coming later in 2016] Presented by Nicola Geretti & Alexander Krivicich, Super Bit Machine Armajet is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter that pits teams of players against each other in fast-paced jetpack combat. Armajet is a best in class mobile game designed for spectator-friendly competitive gaming for tablets and smartphones. Players compete in a modern arena shooter that’s easy to learn, but hard to master.
  	Norman's Night In: The Cave [coming later in 2016] Presented by Nick Iorfino & Alex Reed, Bactrian Games Norman's Night In is a 2D puzzle-platformer that tells the tale of Norman and his fateful fall into the world of cave. While test driving the latest model 3c Bowling Ball, Norman finds himself lost with nothing but his loaned bball and a weird feeling that somehow he was meant to be there.
  	Parallyzed Presented by David Fox, Double Coconut Parallyzed is an atmospheric adventure platformer with unique gameplay, set in a dark and enchanting dreamscape. You play twin sisters who have been cast into separate dimensions. Red and Blue have different attributes and talents, are deeply connected, and have the ability to swap bodies at any time.

  Finalists nominees and winners also received a range of prizes, including Google I/O 2017 tickets, a Tango Development kit, Google Cloud credits, an NVIDIA Android TV & K1 tablet, and a Razer Forge TV bundle.

  Indie Games Contest coming to Europe

  We’re continuing our effort to help indie game developers thrive by highlighting innovative and fun games for fans around the world. Today, we are announcing the Indie Games Contest for developers based in European countries (specific list of countries coming soon!). This is a great opportunity for indie games developers to win prizes that will help you showcase your art to industry experts and grow your business and your community of players worldwide. Make sure you don’t miss out on hearing the details by signing up here for updates.

  As we shared at the festival, it’s rewarding to see how Google Play has evolved over the years. We’re now reaching over 1 billion users every month and there’s literally something for everyone. From virtual reality to family indie games, developers like you continue to inspire, provoke, and innovate through beautiful, artistic games.

  
  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-the-winners-of-the-google-play-indie-games-festival-in-san-francisco-indie-games-contest-coming-soon-to-europe/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/extending-web-technology-with-android/ https://googledata.org/google-android/extending-web-technology-with-android/#comments Wed, 21 Sep 2016 17:01:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=c3348d8679be7fa60f25c494d303c2ff Developer guest post by Active Theory

  Paper Planes started as a simple thought - “What if you could throw a paper plane from one screen to another?”

  The heart of our concept was to bring people together from all over the world, using the power of the web - an instant connection to one another. Modern web technology, specifically JavaScript and WebGL, powered the experience on every screen.

  Paper Planes was initially featured at Google I/O 2016, connecting attendees and outside viewers for 30 minutes preceding the keynote. For the public launch on International Peace Day 2016, we created an Android Experiment, which is also featured on Google Play, to augment the existing web technology with native Android Nougat features such as rich notifications when a plane is caught elsewhere in the world.

  Introduction

  Users create and fold their own plane while adding a stamp that is pre-filled with their location. A simple throwing gesture launches the plane into the virtual world. Users visiting the desktop website would see their planes flying into the screen.

  

  Later, users can check back and see where their planes have been caught around the world. Each stamp on the plane reads like a passport, and a 3D Earth highlights flightpath and distance travelled.

  In addition to making their own planes, users can gesture their phone like a net to catch a plane that has been thrown from elsewhere and pinch to open it, revealing where it has visited. Then they can add their own stamp, and throw it back into the flock.

  WebView

  We developed Paper Planes to work across devices ranging from the 50-foot screen on stage at Google I/O to desktop and mobile using the latest in web technology.

  WebGL

  From the stylized low-poly Earth to the flocking planes, WebGL is used to render the 3D elements that power the experience. We wrote custom GLSL shaders to light the Earth and morph targets to animate the paper as the user pinches to open or close.

  

  WebSockets

  When a user “throws” a plane a message is sent over websockets to the back-end servers where it is relayed to all desktop computers to visualize the plane taking off.

  

  WebWorkers

  The plane flocking simulation is calculated across multiple threads using WebWorkers that calculate the position of each plane and relay that information back to the main thread to be rendered by WebGL.

  

  To create an experience that works great across platforms, we extended the web with native Android code. This enabled us to utilize the deep integration of Chromium within Android to make the view layer of the application with the web code that already existed, while adding deeper integration with the OS such as rich notifications and background services.

  If you’re interested in learning more about how to bridge WebView and Java code, check out this GitHub repo for a tutorial.

  Notifications

  Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) was used to send push notifications to the Android app. When a user’s plane has been caught and thrown by someone else, a notification showing how many cities and miles it has travelled is sent to the device of the plane’s creator via FCM. Outgoing notifications are managed to ensure they are not sent too frequently to a device.

  Background Service

  We implemented a background service to run once a day which checks against local storage to determine when a user last visited the app. If the user hasn’t visited in over two weeks, the app sends a notification to invite the user back into the app to create a new plane.

  The Communication Network

  Our application runs on a network of servers on Google Cloud Platform. We used built-in geocoding headers to get approximate geographic locations for stamps and Socket.IO to connect all devices over WebSockets.

  Users connect to the server nearest them, which relays messages to a single main server as well as to any desktop computers viewing the experience in that region.

  Moving forward

  This approach worked extremely well for us, enabling an experience that was smooth and captivating across platforms and form factors, connecting people from all over the world. Extending the web with native capabilities has proven to be a valuable avenue to deliver high quality experiences going forward. You can learn even more on the Android Experiments website.

  ]]> Developer guest post by Active Theory

  Paper Planes started as a simple thought - “What if you could throw a paper plane from one screen to another?”

  The heart of our concept was to bring people together from all over the world, using the power of the web - an instant connection to one another. Modern web technology, specifically JavaScript and WebGL, powered the experience on every screen.

  Paper Planes was initially featured at Google I/O 2016, connecting attendees and outside viewers for 30 minutes preceding the keynote. For the public launch on International Peace Day 2016, we created an Android Experiment, which is also featured on Google Play, to augment the existing web technology with native Android Nougat features such as rich notifications when a plane is caught elsewhere in the world.

  Introduction

  Users create and fold their own plane while adding a stamp that is pre-filled with their location. A simple throwing gesture launches the plane into the virtual world. Users visiting the desktop website would see their planes flying into the screen.

  

  Later, users can check back and see where their planes have been caught around the world. Each stamp on the plane reads like a passport, and a 3D Earth highlights flightpath and distance travelled.

  In addition to making their own planes, users can gesture their phone like a net to catch a plane that has been thrown from elsewhere and pinch to open it, revealing where it has visited. Then they can add their own stamp, and throw it back into the flock.

  WebView

  We developed Paper Planes to work across devices ranging from the 50-foot screen on stage at Google I/O to desktop and mobile using the latest in web technology.

  WebGL

  From the stylized low-poly Earth to the flocking planes, WebGL is used to render the 3D elements that power the experience. We wrote custom GLSL shaders to light the Earth and morph targets to animate the paper as the user pinches to open or close.

  

  WebSockets

  When a user “throws” a plane a message is sent over websockets to the back-end servers where it is relayed to all desktop computers to visualize the plane taking off.

  

  WebWorkers

  The plane flocking simulation is calculated across multiple threads using WebWorkers that calculate the position of each plane and relay that information back to the main thread to be rendered by WebGL.

  

  To create an experience that works great across platforms, we extended the web with native Android code. This enabled us to utilize the deep integration of Chromium within Android to make the view layer of the application with the web code that already existed, while adding deeper integration with the OS such as rich notifications and background services.

  If you’re interested in learning more about how to bridge WebView and Java code, check out this GitHub repo for a tutorial.

  Notifications

  Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) was used to send push notifications to the Android app. When a user’s plane has been caught and thrown by someone else, a notification showing how many cities and miles it has travelled is sent to the device of the plane’s creator via FCM. Outgoing notifications are managed to ensure they are not sent too frequently to a device.

  Background Service

  We implemented a background service to run once a day which checks against local storage to determine when a user last visited the app. If the user hasn’t visited in over two weeks, the app sends a notification to invite the user back into the app to create a new plane.

  The Communication Network

  Our application runs on a network of servers on Google Cloud Platform. We used built-in geocoding headers to get approximate geographic locations for stamps and Socket.IO to connect all devices over WebSockets.

  Users connect to the server nearest them, which relays messages to a single main server as well as to any desktop computers viewing the experience in that region.

  Moving forward

  This approach worked extremely well for us, enabling an experience that was smooth and captivating across platforms and form factors, connecting people from all over the world. Extending the web with native capabilities has proven to be a valuable avenue to deliver high quality experiences going forward. You can learn even more on the Android Experiments website.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/extending-web-technology-with-android/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/android-studio-2-2/ https://googledata.org/google-android/android-studio-2-2/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2016 17:30:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=d81c1bed0d22ed70e58ffb71006f1206

  By Jamal Eason, Product Manager, Android

  Android Studio 2.2 is available to download today. Previewed at Google I/O 2016, Android Studio 2.2 is the latest release of our IDE used by millions of Android developers around the world.

  Packed with enhancements, this release has three major themes: speed, smarts, and Android platform support. Develop faster with features such as the new Layout Editor, which makes creating an app user interface quick and intuitive. Develop smarter with our new APK analyzer, enhanced Layout Inspector, expanded code analysis, IntelliJ’s 2016.1.3 features and much more. Lastly, as the official IDE for Android app development, Android Studio 2.2 includes support for all the latest developer features in Android 7.0 Nougat, like code completion to help you add Android platform features like Multi-Window support, Quick Settings API, or the redesigned Notifications, and of course, the built-in Android Emulator to test them all out.

  In this release, we evolved the Android Frameworks and the IDE together to create the Constraint Layout. This powerful new layout manager helps you design large and complex layouts in a flat and streamlined hierarchy. The ConstraintLayout integrates into your app like a standard Android support library, and was built in parallel with the new Layout Editor.

  Android Studio 2.2 includes 20+ new features across every major phase of the development process: design, develop, build, & test. From designing UIs with the new ConstraintLayout, to developing C++ code with the Android NDK, to building with the latest Jack compliers, to creating Espresso test cases for your app, Android Studio 2.2 is the update you do not want to miss. Here’s more detail on some of the top highlights:

  Design

  • Layout Editor: Creating Android app user interfaces is now easier with the new user interface designer. Quickly construct the structure of your app UI with the new blueprint mode and adjust the visual attributes of each widget with new properties panel. Learn more.
  

  Layout Editor

  • Constraint Layout: This new layout is a flexible layout manager for your app that allows you to create dynamic user interfaces without nesting multiple layouts. It is backwards compatible all the way back to Android API level 9 (Gingerbread). ConstraintLayout works best with the new Layout Editor in Android Studio 2.2. Learn more.
  

  ConstraintLayout

  Develop

  • Improved C++ Support: You can now use CMake or ndk-build to compile your C++ projects from Gradle. Migrating projects from CMake build systems to Android Studio is now seamless. You will also find C++ support in the new project wizard in Android Studio, plus a number of bug fixes to the C++ edit and debug experience. Learn more.
  

  C++ Code Editing & CMake Support

  • Samples Browser: Referencing Android sample code is now even easier with Android Studio 2.2. Within the code editor window, find occurrences of your app code in Google Android sample code to help jump start your app development. Learn more.
  

  Sample Code Menu

  Build

  • Instant Run Improvements: Introduced in Android Studio 2.0, Instant Run is our major, long-term investment to make Android development as fast and lightweight. Since launch, it has significantly improved the edit, build, run iteration cycles for many developers. In this release, we have made many stability and reliability improvements to Instant Run. If you have previously disabled Instant Run, we encourage you to re-enable it and let us know if you come across further issues. (Settings → Build, Execution, Deployment → Instant Run [Windows/Linux] , Preferences → Build, Execution, Deployment → Instant Run [OS X]). For details on the fixes that we have made, see the Android Studio 2.2 release notes.
  

  Enable Instant Run

  • APK Analyzer: Easily inspect the contents of your APKs to understand the size contribution of each component. This feature can be helpful when debugging multi-dex issues. Plus, with the APK Analyzer you can compare two versions of an APK. Learn more.
  

  APK Analyzer

  • Build cache (Experimental): We are continuing our investments to improve build speeds with the introduction of a new experimental build cache that will help reduce both full and incremental build times. Just add android.enableBuildCache=true to your gradle.properties file. Learn more.
  

  Build Cache Setting

  Test

  • Virtual Sensors in the Android Emulator: The Android Emulator now includes a new set of virtual sensors controls. With the new UI controls, you can now test Android Sensors such as Accelerometer, Ambient Temperature, Magnetometer and more. Learn more.
  

  Android Emulator Virtual Sensors

  • Espresso Test Recorder (Beta): The Espresso Test Recorder lets you easily create UI tests by recording interactions with your app; it then outputs the UI test code for you. You record your interactions with a device and add assertions to verify UI elements in particular snapshots of your app. Espresso Test Recorder then takes the saved recording and automatically generates a corresponding UI test. You can run the test locally, on your continuous integration server, or using Firebase Test Lab for Android. Learn more.
  
  Espresso Test Recorder
  • GPU Debugger (Beta): The GPU Debugger is now in Beta. You can now capture a stream of OpenGL ES commands on your Android device and then replay it from inside Android Studio for analysis. You can also fully inspect the GPU state of any given OpenGL ES command to better understand and debug your graphical output. Lean more.
  
  GPU Debugger

  To recap, Android Studio 2.2 includes these major features and more:

  Design Layout Editor Constraint Layout Layout Inspector (Experimental) PSD File Support in Vector Asset Studio Develop Firebase Plugin Updated Code Analysis & Lint checks Enhanced accessibility support Improved C++ Support Edit & Debugging IntelliJ 2016.1.3 platform update Samples Browser Improved Font Rendering

  Build Jack Compiler Improvements Java 8 Language Support C++ ndk-build or CMake Merged Manifest Viewer Build cache (Experimental) OpenJDK Support Instant Run Improvements Test Espresso Test Recorder (Beta) APK Analyzer GPU Debugger (Beta) Virtual Sensors in the Android Emulator

  Learn more about Android Studio 2.2 by reviewing the release notes and the preview blog post.

  Getting Started

  Download

  If you are using a previous version of Android Studio, you can check for updates on the Stable channel from the navigation menu (Help → Check for Update [Windows/Linux] , Android Studio → Check for Updates [OS X]). You can also download Android Studio 2.2 from the official download page. To take advantage of all the new features and improvements in Android Studio, you should also update to the Android Gradle plugin version to 2.2.0 in your current app project.

  Next Release

  We would like to thank all of you in the Android Developer community for your work on this release. We are grateful for your contributions, your ongoing feedback which inspired the new features in this release, and your highly active use on canary and beta builds filing bugs. We all wanted to make Android Studio 2.2 our best release yet, with many stability and performance fixes in addition to the many new features. For our next release, look for even more; we want to work hard to address feedback and keep driving up quality and stability on existing features to make you productive.

  We appreciate any feedback on things you like, issues or features you would like to see. Connect with us -- the Android Studio development team -- on our Google+ page or on Twitter.

  
  What's New in Android Studio 2.2]]>

  By Jamal Eason, Product Manager, Android

  Android Studio 2.2 is available to download today. Previewed at Google I/O 2016, Android Studio 2.2 is the latest release of our IDE used by millions of Android developers around the world.

  Packed with enhancements, this release has three major themes: speed, smarts, and Android platform support. Develop faster with features such as the new Layout Editor, which makes creating an app user interface quick and intuitive. Develop smarter with our new APK analyzer, enhanced Layout Inspector, expanded code analysis, IntelliJ’s 2016.1.3 features and much more. Lastly, as the official IDE for Android app development, Android Studio 2.2 includes support for all the latest developer features in Android 7.0 Nougat, like code completion to help you add Android platform features like Multi-Window support, Quick Settings API, or the redesigned Notifications, and of course, the built-in Android Emulator to test them all out.

  In this release, we evolved the Android Frameworks and the IDE together to create the Constraint Layout. This powerful new layout manager helps you design large and complex layouts in a flat and streamlined hierarchy. The ConstraintLayout integrates into your app like a standard Android support library, and was built in parallel with the new Layout Editor.

  Android Studio 2.2 includes 20+ new features across every major phase of the development process: design, develop, build, & test. From designing UIs with the new ConstraintLayout, to developing C++ code with the Android NDK, to building with the latest Jack compliers, to creating Espresso test cases for your app, Android Studio 2.2 is the update you do not want to miss. Here’s more detail on some of the top highlights:

  Design

  • Layout Editor: Creating Android app user interfaces is now easier with the new user interface designer. Quickly construct the structure of your app UI with the new blueprint mode and adjust the visual attributes of each widget with new properties panel. Learn more.
  

  Layout Editor

  • Constraint Layout: This new layout is a flexible layout manager for your app that allows you to create dynamic user interfaces without nesting multiple layouts. It is backwards compatible all the way back to Android API level 9 (Gingerbread). ConstraintLayout works best with the new Layout Editor in Android Studio 2.2. Learn more.
  

  ConstraintLayout

  Develop

  • Improved C++ Support: You can now use CMake or ndk-build to compile your C++ projects from Gradle. Migrating projects from CMake build systems to Android Studio is now seamless. You will also find C++ support in the new project wizard in Android Studio, plus a number of bug fixes to the C++ edit and debug experience. Learn more.
  

  C++ Code Editing & CMake Support

  • Samples Browser: Referencing Android sample code is now even easier with Android Studio 2.2. Within the code editor window, find occurrences of your app code in Google Android sample code to help jump start your app development. Learn more.
  

  Sample Code Menu

  Build

  • Instant Run Improvements: Introduced in Android Studio 2.0, Instant Run is our major, long-term investment to make Android development as fast and lightweight. Since launch, it has significantly improved the edit, build, run iteration cycles for many developers. In this release, we have made many stability and reliability improvements to Instant Run. If you have previously disabled Instant Run, we encourage you to re-enable it and let us know if you come across further issues. (Settings → Build, Execution, Deployment → Instant Run [Windows/Linux] , Preferences → Build, Execution, Deployment → Instant Run [OS X]). For details on the fixes that we have made, see the Android Studio 2.2 release notes.
  

  Enable Instant Run

  • APK Analyzer: Easily inspect the contents of your APKs to understand the size contribution of each component. This feature can be helpful when debugging multi-dex issues. Plus, with the APK Analyzer you can compare two versions of an APK. Learn more.
  

  APK Analyzer

  • Build cache (Experimental): We are continuing our investments to improve build speeds with the introduction of a new experimental build cache that will help reduce both full and incremental build times. Just add android.enableBuildCache=true to your gradle.properties file. Learn more.
  

  Build Cache Setting

  Test

  • Virtual Sensors in the Android Emulator: The Android Emulator now includes a new set of virtual sensors controls. With the new UI controls, you can now test Android Sensors such as Accelerometer, Ambient Temperature, Magnetometer and more. Learn more.
  

  Android Emulator Virtual Sensors

  • Espresso Test Recorder (Beta): The Espresso Test Recorder lets you easily create UI tests by recording interactions with your app; it then outputs the UI test code for you. You record your interactions with a device and add assertions to verify UI elements in particular snapshots of your app. Espresso Test Recorder then takes the saved recording and automatically generates a corresponding UI test. You can run the test locally, on your continuous integration server, or using Firebase Test Lab for Android. Learn more.
  
  Espresso Test Recorder
  • GPU Debugger (Beta): The GPU Debugger is now in Beta. You can now capture a stream of OpenGL ES commands on your Android device and then replay it from inside Android Studio for analysis. You can also fully inspect the GPU state of any given OpenGL ES command to better understand and debug your graphical output. Lean more.
  
  GPU Debugger

  To recap, Android Studio 2.2 includes these major features and more:

  Design Layout Editor Constraint Layout Layout Inspector (Experimental) PSD File Support in Vector Asset Studio Develop Firebase Plugin Updated Code Analysis & Lint checks Enhanced accessibility support Improved C++ Support Edit & Debugging IntelliJ 2016.1.3 platform update Samples Browser Improved Font Rendering

  Build Jack Compiler Improvements Java 8 Language Support C++ ndk-build or CMake Merged Manifest Viewer Build cache (Experimental) OpenJDK Support Instant Run Improvements Test Espresso Test Recorder (Beta) APK Analyzer GPU Debugger (Beta) Virtual Sensors in the Android Emulator

  Learn more about Android Studio 2.2 by reviewing the release notes and the preview blog post.

  Getting Started

  Download

  If you are using a previous version of Android Studio, you can check for updates on the Stable channel from the navigation menu (Help → Check for Update [Windows/Linux] , Android Studio → Check for Updates [OS X]). You can also download Android Studio 2.2 from the official download page. To take advantage of all the new features and improvements in Android Studio, you should also update to the Android Gradle plugin version to 2.2.0 in your current app project.

  Next Release

  We would like to thank all of you in the Android Developer community for your work on this release. We are grateful for your contributions, your ongoing feedback which inspired the new features in this release, and your highly active use on canary and beta builds filing bugs. We all wanted to make Android Studio 2.2 our best release yet, with many stability and performance fixes in addition to the many new features. For our next release, look for even more; we want to work hard to address feedback and keep driving up quality and stability on existing features to make you productive.

  We appreciate any feedback on things you like, issues or features you would like to see. Connect with us -- the Android Studio development team -- on our Google+ page or on Twitter.

  
  What's New in Android Studio 2.2]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/android-studio-2-2/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/keeping-android-safe-security-enhancements-in-nougat/ https://googledata.org/google-android/keeping-android-safe-security-enhancements-in-nougat/#comments Tue, 06 Sep 2016 20:02:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=4a010b91b13de9c2c4524bb5b0e531e6 Posted by Xiaowen Xin, Android Security Team

  Over the course of the summer, we previewed a variety of security enhancements in Android 7.0 Nougat: an increased focus on security with our vulnerability rewards program, a new Direct Boot mode, re-architected mediaserver and hardened media stack, apps that are protected from accidental regressions to cleartext traffic, an update to the way Android handles trusted certificate authorities, strict enforcement of verified boot with error correction, and updates to the Linux kernel to reduce the attack surface and increase memory protection. Phew!

  Now that Nougat has begun to roll out, we wanted to recap these updates in a single overview and highlight a few new improvements.

  Direct Boot and encryption

  In previous versions of Android, users with encrypted devices would have to enter their PIN/pattern/password by default during the boot process to decrypt their storage area and finish booting. With Android 7.0 Nougat, we’ve updated the underlying encryption scheme and streamlined the boot process to speed up rebooting your phone. Now your phone’s main features, like the phone app and your alarm clock, are ready right away before you even type your PIN, so people can call you and your alarm clock can wake you up. We call this feature Direct Boot.

  Under the hood, file-based encryption enables this improved user experience. With this new encryption scheme, the system storage area, as well as each user profile storage area, are all encrypted separately. Unlike with full-disk encryption, where all data was encrypted as a single unit, per-profile-based encryption enables the system to reboot normally into a functional state using just device keys. Essential apps can opt-in to run in a limited state after reboot, and when you enter your lock screen credential, these apps then get access your user data to provide full functionality.

  File-based encryption better isolates and protects individual users and profiles on a device by encrypting data at a finer granularity. Each profile is encrypted using a unique key that can only be unlocked by your PIN or password, so that your data can only be decrypted by you.

  

  Encryption support is getting stronger across the Android ecosystem as well. Starting with Marshmallow, all capable devices were required to support encryption. Many devices, like Nexus 5X and 6P also use unique keys that are accessible only with trusted hardware, such as the ARM TrustZone. Now with 7.0 Nougat, all new capable Android devices must also have this kind of hardware support for key storage and provide brute force protection while verifying your lock screen credential before these keys can be used. This way, all of your data can only be decrypted on that exact device and only by you.

  The media stack and platform hardening

  In Android Nougat, we’ve both hardened and re-architected mediaserver, one of the main system services that processes untrusted input. First, by incorporating integer overflow sanitization, part of Clang’s UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer, we prevent an entire class of vulnerabilities, which comprise the majority of reported libstagefright bugs. As soon as an integer overflow is detected, we shut down the process so an attack is stopped. Second, we’ve modularized the media stack to put different components into individual sandboxes and tightened the privileges of each sandbox to have the minimum privileges required to perform its job. With this containment technique, a compromise in many parts of the stack grants the attacker access to significantly fewer permissions and significantly reduced exposed kernel attack surface.

  In addition to hardening the mediaserver, we’ve added a large list of protections for the platform, including:

  • Verified Boot: Verified Boot is now strictly enforced to prevent compromised devices from booting; it supports error correction to improve reliability against non-malicious data corruption.
  • SELinux: Updated SELinux configuration and increased Seccomp coverage further locks down the application sandbox and reduces attack surface.
  • Library load order randomization and improved ASLR: Increased randomness makes some code-reuse attacks less reliable.
  • Kernel hardening: Added additional memory protection for newer kernels by marking portions of kernel memory as read-only, restricting kernel access to userspace addresses, and further reducing the existing attack surface.
  • APK signature scheme v2: Introduced a whole-file signature scheme that improves verification speed and strengthens integrity guarantees.

  App security improvements

  Android Nougat is the safest and easiest version of Android for application developers to use.

  • Apps that want to share data with other apps now must explicitly opt-in by offering their files through a Content Provider, like FileProvider. The application private directory (usually /data/data/) is now set to Linux permission 0700 for apps targeting API Level 24+.
  • To make it easier for apps to control access to their secure network traffic, user-installed certificate authorities and those installed through Device Admin APIs are no longer trusted by default for apps targeting API Level 24+. Additionally, all new Android devices must ship with the same trusted CA store.
  • With Network Security Config, developers can more easily configure network security policy through a declarative configuration file. This includes blocking cleartext traffic, configuring the set of trusted CAs and certificates, and setting up a separate debug configuration.

  We’ve also continued to refine app permissions and capabilities to protect you from potentially harmful apps.

  • To improve device privacy, we have further restricted and removed access to persistent device identifiers such as MAC addresses.
  • User interface overlays can no longer be displayed on top of permissions dialogs. This “clickjacking” technique was used by some apps to attempt to gain permissions improperly.
  • We’ve reduced the power of device admin applications so they can no longer change your lockscreen if you have a lockscreen set, and device admin will no longer be notified of impending disable via onDisableRequested(). These were tactics used by some ransomware to gain control of a device.

  System Updates

  Lastly, we've made significant enhancements to the OTA update system to keep your device up-to-date much more easily with the latest system software and security patches. We've made the install time for OTAs faster, and the OTA size smaller for security updates. You no longer have to wait for the optimizing apps step, which was one of the slowest parts of the update process, because the new JIT compiler has been optimized to make installs and updates lightning fast.

  The update experience is even faster for new Android devices running Nougat with updated firmware. Like they do with Chromebooks, updates are applied in the background while the device continues to run normally. These updates are applied to a different system partition, and when you reboot, it will seamlessly switch to that new partition running the new system software version.

  
  

  We’re constantly working to improve Android security and Android Nougat brings significant security improvements across all fronts. As always, we appreciate feedback on our work and welcome suggestions for how we can improve Android. Contact us at security@android.com.

  ]]> Posted by Xiaowen Xin, Android Security Team

  Over the course of the summer, we previewed a variety of security enhancements in Android 7.0 Nougat: an increased focus on security with our vulnerability rewards program, a new Direct Boot mode, re-architected mediaserver and hardened media stack, apps that are protected from accidental regressions to cleartext traffic, an update to the way Android handles trusted certificate authorities, strict enforcement of verified boot with error correction, and updates to the Linux kernel to reduce the attack surface and increase memory protection. Phew!

  Now that Nougat has begun to roll out, we wanted to recap these updates in a single overview and highlight a few new improvements.

  Direct Boot and encryption

  In previous versions of Android, users with encrypted devices would have to enter their PIN/pattern/password by default during the boot process to decrypt their storage area and finish booting. With Android 7.0 Nougat, we’ve updated the underlying encryption scheme and streamlined the boot process to speed up rebooting your phone. Now your phone’s main features, like the phone app and your alarm clock, are ready right away before you even type your PIN, so people can call you and your alarm clock can wake you up. We call this feature Direct Boot.

  Under the hood, file-based encryption enables this improved user experience. With this new encryption scheme, the system storage area, as well as each user profile storage area, are all encrypted separately. Unlike with full-disk encryption, where all data was encrypted as a single unit, per-profile-based encryption enables the system to reboot normally into a functional state using just device keys. Essential apps can opt-in to run in a limited state after reboot, and when you enter your lock screen credential, these apps then get access your user data to provide full functionality.

  File-based encryption better isolates and protects individual users and profiles on a device by encrypting data at a finer granularity. Each profile is encrypted using a unique key that can only be unlocked by your PIN or password, so that your data can only be decrypted by you.

  

  Encryption support is getting stronger across the Android ecosystem as well. Starting with Marshmallow, all capable devices were required to support encryption. Many devices, like Nexus 5X and 6P also use unique keys that are accessible only with trusted hardware, such as the ARM TrustZone. Now with 7.0 Nougat, all new capable Android devices must also have this kind of hardware support for key storage and provide brute force protection while verifying your lock screen credential before these keys can be used. This way, all of your data can only be decrypted on that exact device and only by you.

  The media stack and platform hardening

  In Android Nougat, we’ve both hardened and re-architected mediaserver, one of the main system services that processes untrusted input. First, by incorporating integer overflow sanitization, part of Clang’s UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer, we prevent an entire class of vulnerabilities, which comprise the majority of reported libstagefright bugs. As soon as an integer overflow is detected, we shut down the process so an attack is stopped. Second, we’ve modularized the media stack to put different components into individual sandboxes and tightened the privileges of each sandbox to have the minimum privileges required to perform its job. With this containment technique, a compromise in many parts of the stack grants the attacker access to significantly fewer permissions and significantly reduced exposed kernel attack surface.

  In addition to hardening the mediaserver, we’ve added a large list of protections for the platform, including:

  • Verified Boot: Verified Boot is now strictly enforced to prevent compromised devices from booting; it supports error correction to improve reliability against non-malicious data corruption.
  • SELinux: Updated SELinux configuration and increased Seccomp coverage further locks down the application sandbox and reduces attack surface.
  • Library load order randomization and improved ASLR: Increased randomness makes some code-reuse attacks less reliable.
  • Kernel hardening: Added additional memory protection for newer kernels by marking portions of kernel memory as read-only, restricting kernel access to userspace addresses, and further reducing the existing attack surface.
  • APK signature scheme v2: Introduced a whole-file signature scheme that improves verification speed and strengthens integrity guarantees.

  App security improvements

  Android Nougat is the safest and easiest version of Android for application developers to use.

  • Apps that want to share data with other apps now must explicitly opt-in by offering their files through a Content Provider, like FileProvider. The application private directory (usually /data/data/) is now set to Linux permission 0700 for apps targeting API Level 24+.
  • To make it easier for apps to control access to their secure network traffic, user-installed certificate authorities and those installed through Device Admin APIs are no longer trusted by default for apps targeting API Level 24+. Additionally, all new Android devices must ship with the same trusted CA store.
  • With Network Security Config, developers can more easily configure network security policy through a declarative configuration file. This includes blocking cleartext traffic, configuring the set of trusted CAs and certificates, and setting up a separate debug configuration.

  We’ve also continued to refine app permissions and capabilities to protect you from potentially harmful apps.

  • To improve device privacy, we have further restricted and removed access to persistent device identifiers such as MAC addresses.
  • User interface overlays can no longer be displayed on top of permissions dialogs. This “clickjacking” technique was used by some apps to attempt to gain permissions improperly.
  • We’ve reduced the power of device admin applications so they can no longer change your lockscreen if you have a lockscreen set, and device admin will no longer be notified of impending disable via onDisableRequested(). These were tactics used by some ransomware to gain control of a device.

  System Updates

  Lastly, we've made significant enhancements to the OTA update system to keep your device up-to-date much more easily with the latest system software and security patches. We've made the install time for OTAs faster, and the OTA size smaller for security updates. You no longer have to wait for the optimizing apps step, which was one of the slowest parts of the update process, because the new JIT compiler has been optimized to make installs and updates lightning fast.

  The update experience is even faster for new Android devices running Nougat with updated firmware. Like they do with Chromebooks, updates are applied in the background while the device continues to run normally. These updates are applied to a different system partition, and when you reboot, it will seamlessly switch to that new partition running the new system software version.

  
  

  We’re constantly working to improve Android security and Android Nougat brings significant security improvements across all fronts. As always, we appreciate feedback on our work and welcome suggestions for how we can improve Android. Contact us at security@android.com.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/keeping-android-safe-security-enhancements-in-nougat/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/the-power-of-early-access/ https://googledata.org/google-android/the-power-of-early-access/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2016 16:52:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=c4ffdbc64e48edc1ea9130a7784effdf

  By Karolis Balciunas, VC & Startups Business Development Manager, Google Play

  If you have ever launched a mobile app, you know full well that launching your app into the world successfully requires more than publishing it and hoping for the best.

  It’s the diligent testing, constant user feedback loop and incremental tweaks leading up to that special launch moment that truly count.

  The Google Play Developer Console gives developers robust tools to do beta tests or experiment with how they market their apps to users through the Play store listing. Getting this critical early feedback from users requires just that — users. And as a developer working on a new product that isn’t fully launched yet, how do you find people to try your new app and take the time to give you feedback?

  1 Million Tester Installs And Counting

  At Google I/O in May, we unveiled a new destination on Google Play to address this dilemma head on. Together with 29 app and game partners, we launched an “Early Access” collection that made select new Android titles that are running an open beta available for anyone to try before they officially launch. It was an immediate hit. Early-adopter users were eager and willing to send developers actionable, private feedback in exchange for an opportunity to get their hands onto the latest exciting apps and games. Most importantly, the feedback was objective and candid as it did not come from their friends and family who are often afraid to hurt their feelings. In just over a month since the collection became available to all users, open beta titles have been installed over 1 million times and demand is only growing.

  3 Powerful Stories

  Our launch partners experienced the power of Early Access in various ways. Peer-based language practice developer Lingbe was eager to validate the concept of their app connecting natives with language learners via voice conversations, which meant they needed to connect with a critical mass of possible users around the world from different language and cultural backgrounds. In just a few weeks, "the surge in users in addition to our current fan base meant that we've had Brazilians practicing with Spanish users and talking about their hobby in photography, Mexicans making friends with people from India, and Filipinos talking to Moroccans!"

  Readfeed, one of the first online book clubs on Android, relied on Early Access to solicit feature requests, identify bugs, locate new and optimize existing target markets as well as build a sizable reader community. They stated that "early access confirmed that our target market exists and that we have something that they need. I don't think we'd be in the same place right now without it. It enabled us to validate and effectively iterate on our idea from day one."

  Finally, Drippler participated in Early Access to test their new "Wiz" app and understand their beta title's appeal to their target demographic. Their performance in the Early Access collection as well as private feedback from thousands of newly acquired beta testers allowed them to polish the app before the launch and gave them confidence that their users will enjoy it."

  These three developers’ stories show us just a few ways that Early Access can help developers build great new apps and games, and it shows the value of getting early feedback from beta testers before launching more broadly.

  Get Involved

  If you are a developer getting ready to launch on Google Play, you can nominate your app or game to be part of Early Access. Learn more here.

  New titles are added weekly and thousands of users are looking to experiment with new and exciting ideas.

  ]]>

  By Karolis Balciunas, VC & Startups Business Development Manager, Google Play

  If you have ever launched a mobile app, you know full well that launching your app into the world successfully requires more than publishing it and hoping for the best.

  It’s the diligent testing, constant user feedback loop and incremental tweaks leading up to that special launch moment that truly count.

  The Google Play Developer Console gives developers robust tools to do beta tests or experiment with how they market their apps to users through the Play store listing. Getting this critical early feedback from users requires just that — users. And as a developer working on a new product that isn’t fully launched yet, how do you find people to try your new app and take the time to give you feedback?

  1 Million Tester Installs And Counting

  At Google I/O in May, we unveiled a new destination on Google Play to address this dilemma head on. Together with 29 app and game partners, we launched an “Early Access” collection that made select new Android titles that are running an open beta available for anyone to try before they officially launch. It was an immediate hit. Early-adopter users were eager and willing to send developers actionable, private feedback in exchange for an opportunity to get their hands onto the latest exciting apps and games. Most importantly, the feedback was objective and candid as it did not come from their friends and family who are often afraid to hurt their feelings. In just over a month since the collection became available to all users, open beta titles have been installed over 1 million times and demand is only growing.

  3 Powerful Stories

  Our launch partners experienced the power of Early Access in various ways. Peer-based language practice developer Lingbe was eager to validate the concept of their app connecting natives with language learners via voice conversations, which meant they needed to connect with a critical mass of possible users around the world from different language and cultural backgrounds. In just a few weeks, "the surge in users in addition to our current fan base meant that we've had Brazilians practicing with Spanish users and talking about their hobby in photography, Mexicans making friends with people from India, and Filipinos talking to Moroccans!"

  Readfeed, one of the first online book clubs on Android, relied on Early Access to solicit feature requests, identify bugs, locate new and optimize existing target markets as well as build a sizable reader community. They stated that "early access confirmed that our target market exists and that we have something that they need. I don't think we'd be in the same place right now without it. It enabled us to validate and effectively iterate on our idea from day one."

  Finally, Drippler participated in Early Access to test their new "Wiz" app and understand their beta title's appeal to their target demographic. Their performance in the Early Access collection as well as private feedback from thousands of newly acquired beta testers allowed them to polish the app before the launch and gave them confidence that their users will enjoy it."

  These three developers’ stories show us just a few ways that Early Access can help developers build great new apps and games, and it shows the value of getting early feedback from beta testers before launching more broadly.

  Get Involved

  If you are a developer getting ready to launch on Google Play, you can nominate your app or game to be part of Early Access. Learn more here.

  New titles are added weekly and thousands of users are looking to experiment with new and exciting ideas.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/the-power-of-early-access/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-hutch-improves-player-engagement-with-ab-testing-on-google-play/ https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-hutch-improves-player-engagement-with-ab-testing-on-google-play/#comments Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:09:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=78617745cb84b4f1bc6da00c9af6f7fd Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

  Hutch is a London based mobile studio focusing entirely on racing games, with more than 10 million players on Google Play. For their latest game, MMX Hill Climb, they used A/B testing and game analytics to improve the game design and experience resulting in more than 48 mins daily active usage per user.

  Watch Shaun Rutland, CEO, and Robin Scannell, Games Analyst, explain how they were able to deliver a more engaging user experience in this video.

  Learn more about A/B testing and get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date on new features and learn best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

  ]]> Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

  Hutch is a London based mobile studio focusing entirely on racing games, with more than 10 million players on Google Play. For their latest game, MMX Hill Climb, they used A/B testing and game analytics to improve the game design and experience resulting in more than 48 mins daily active usage per user.

  Watch Shaun Rutland, CEO, and Robin Scannell, Games Analyst, explain how they were able to deliver a more engaging user experience in this video.

  Learn more about A/B testing and get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date on new features and learn best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-hutch-improves-player-engagement-with-ab-testing-on-google-play/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-open-registration-and-exhibitors-for-google-play-indie-games-festival-in-san-francisco-sept-24/ https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-open-registration-and-exhibitors-for-google-play-indie-games-festival-in-san-francisco-sept-24/#comments Mon, 29 Aug 2016 17:03:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=75ffa7cd4d853754e6599690a0763a76 Posted by Jamil Moledina, Google Play, Games Strategic Lead

  To celebrate the art of the latest innovative indie games, we’re hosting the first Google Play Indie Games Festival in North America on September 24th in San Francisco. At the festival, Android fans and gamers will have a unique opportunity to play new and unreleased indie games from some of the most innovative developers in the US and Canada, as well as vote for their favorite ones.

  Registration is now open and the event is free for everyone to enjoy.

  

  We’re also excited to announce the games selected to exhibit and compete at the event. From over 200 submissions, we carefully picked 30 games that promise the most fun and engaging experiences to attendees. Fans will have a chance to play a variety of indie games not yet available publicly.

  Check out the full list of games selected here and below.

  
  

  A Matter of Murder	Antihero (coming soon)	AR Zombie (coming soon)	Armajet (coming soon)	Armor Blitz (coming soon)
  Bit Bit Blocks (coming soon)	1979 Revolution: Black Friday (coming soon)	Coffee Pot Terrarium (coming soon)	Crayola® Worlds for Tango (coming soon)	Dog Sled Saga (coming soon)
  Endless Mine	Futurable 1. Summer City (coming soon)	Gunhouse (coming soon)	HoloGrid: Monster Battle (coming soon)	Hovercraft: Takedown
  HOVR (coming soon)	Maruta 279 (coming soon)	Norman's Night In: The Cave (coming soon)	Numeris	Orbit - Playing with Gravity
  Parallyzed	Psychic (coming soon)	Riptide GP: Renegade	Roofbot	Sand Stories (coming soon)
  SmashWars VR: Drone Racing	ThreeSwipes	Rainmaker: Ultimate Trading	Zombie Rollerz (coming soon)	Coming soon

  Fans will also have the opportunity to vote for their favorite games at the festival, along with an authoritative panel of judges from Google Play and the game industry. They include:

  • Ron Carmel, Co-founder of Indie Fund; co-creator of World of Goo
  • Hyunse Chang, Business Development Manager at Google Play
  • Lina Chen, Co-founder & CEO of Nix Hydra
  • David Edery, CEO of Spry Fox
  • Maria Essig, Partner Manager, Indies at Google Play
  • Noah Falstein, Chief Game Designer at Google
  • Dan Fiden, Chief Strategy Officer of Funplus
  • Emily Greer, CEO of Kongregate
  • Alex Lee, Producer, Program Manager, Daydream & Project Tango at Google
  • Jordan Maron, Gamer and independent YouTuber “CaptainSparklez”

  We are also thrilled to announce that veteran game designer and professor Richard Lemarchand will be the emcee for the event. He was lead designer at Crystal Dynamics and Naughty Dog, and is now Associate Chair and Associate Professor at the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media and Games Division.

  The winning developers will receive prizes, such Google Cloud credits, NVIDIA SHIELD Android TVs and K1 tablets, Razer Forge TV bundles, and more, to recognize their efforts.

  Join us for an exciting opportunity to connect with fellow game fans, get inspired, and celebrate the art of indie games. Learn more about the event on the event website.

  ]]> Posted by Jamil Moledina, Google Play, Games Strategic Lead

  To celebrate the art of the latest innovative indie games, we’re hosting the first Google Play Indie Games Festival in North America on September 24th in San Francisco. At the festival, Android fans and gamers will have a unique opportunity to play new and unreleased indie games from some of the most innovative developers in the US and Canada, as well as vote for their favorite ones.

  Registration is now open and the event is free for everyone to enjoy.

  

  We’re also excited to announce the games selected to exhibit and compete at the event. From over 200 submissions, we carefully picked 30 games that promise the most fun and engaging experiences to attendees. Fans will have a chance to play a variety of indie games not yet available publicly.

  Check out the full list of games selected here and below.

  
  

  A Matter of Murder	Antihero (coming soon)	AR Zombie (coming soon)	Armajet (coming soon)	Armor Blitz (coming soon)
  Bit Bit Blocks (coming soon)	1979 Revolution: Black Friday (coming soon)	Coffee Pot Terrarium (coming soon)	Crayola® Worlds for Tango (coming soon)	Dog Sled Saga (coming soon)
  Endless Mine	Futurable 1. Summer City (coming soon)	Gunhouse (coming soon)	HoloGrid: Monster Battle (coming soon)	Hovercraft: Takedown
  HOVR (coming soon)	Maruta 279 (coming soon)	Norman's Night In: The Cave (coming soon)	Numeris	Orbit - Playing with Gravity
  Parallyzed	Psychic (coming soon)	Riptide GP: Renegade	Roofbot	Sand Stories (coming soon)
  SmashWars VR: Drone Racing	ThreeSwipes	Rainmaker: Ultimate Trading	Zombie Rollerz (coming soon)	Coming soon

  Fans will also have the opportunity to vote for their favorite games at the festival, along with an authoritative panel of judges from Google Play and the game industry. They include:

  • Ron Carmel, Co-founder of Indie Fund; co-creator of World of Goo
  • Hyunse Chang, Business Development Manager at Google Play
  • Lina Chen, Co-founder & CEO of Nix Hydra
  • David Edery, CEO of Spry Fox
  • Maria Essig, Partner Manager, Indies at Google Play
  • Noah Falstein, Chief Game Designer at Google
  • Dan Fiden, Chief Strategy Officer of Funplus
  • Emily Greer, CEO of Kongregate
  • Alex Lee, Producer, Program Manager, Daydream & Project Tango at Google
  • Jordan Maron, Gamer and independent YouTuber “CaptainSparklez”

  We are also thrilled to announce that veteran game designer and professor Richard Lemarchand will be the emcee for the event. He was lead designer at Crystal Dynamics and Naughty Dog, and is now Associate Chair and Associate Professor at the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media and Games Division.

  The winning developers will receive prizes, such Google Cloud credits, NVIDIA SHIELD Android TVs and K1 tablets, Razer Forge TV bundles, and more, to recognize their efforts.

  Join us for an exciting opportunity to connect with fellow game fans, get inspired, and celebrate the art of indie games. Learn more about the event on the event website.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-open-registration-and-exhibitors-for-google-play-indie-games-festival-in-san-francisco-sept-24/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/taking-the-final-wrapper-off-of-android-7-0-nougat/ https://googledata.org/google-android/taking-the-final-wrapper-off-of-android-7-0-nougat/#comments Mon, 22 Aug 2016 17:31:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=1ec945c9dced533f07f93af6d1995fad

  Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

  

  Android 7.0 Nougat

  Today, Android 7.0 Nougat will begin rolling out to users, starting with Nexus devices. At the same time, we’re pushing the Android 7.0 source code to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), extending public availability of this new version of Android to the broader ecosystem.

  We’ve been working together with you over the past several months to get your feedback on this release, and also to make sure your apps are ready for the users who will run them on Nougat devices.

  What’s inside Nougat

  Android Nougat reflects input from thousands of fans and developers like you, all around the world. There are over 250 major features in Android Nougat, including VR Mode in Android. We’ve worked at all levels of the Android stack in Nougat — from how the operating system reads sensor data to how it sends pixels to the display — to make it especially built to provide high quality mobile VR experiences.

  Plus, Nougat brings a number of new features to help make Android more powerful, more productive and more secure. It introduces a brand new JIT/AOT compiler to improve software performance, make app installs faster, and take up less storage. It also adds platform support for Vulkan, a low-overhead, cross-platform API for high-performance, 3D graphics. Multi-Window support lets users run two apps at the same time, and Direct Reply so users can reply directly to notifications without having to open the app. As always, Android is built with powerful layers of security and encryption to keep your private data private, so Nougat brings new features like File-based encryption, seamless updates, and Direct Boot.

  You can find all of the Nougat developer resources here, including details on behavior changes and new features you can use in your apps. An overview of what's new for developers is available here, and you can explore all of the new user features in Nougat here.

  

  Multi-window mode in Android Nougat

  The next wave of users

  Starting today and rolling out over the next several weeks, the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Pixel C, and General Mobile 4G (Android One) will get an over-the-air software update to Android 7.0 Nougat. Devices enrolled in the Android Beta Program will also receive this final version.

  And there are many tasty devices coming from our partners running Android Nougat, including the upcoming LG V20, which will be the first new smartphone that ships with Android Nougat, right out of the box.

  With all of these new devices beginning to run Nougat, now is the time to publish your app updates to Google Play. We recommend compiling against, and ideally targeting, API 24. If you’re still testing some last minute changes, a great strategy to do this is using Google Play’s beta testing feature to get early feedback from a small group of users — including those using Android 7.0 Nougat — and then doing a staged rollout as you release the updated app to all users.

  What’s next for Nougat?

  We’re moving Nougat into a new regular maintenance schedule over the coming quarters. In fact, we’ve already started work on the first Nougat maintenance release, that will bring continued refinements and polish, and we’re planning to bring that to you this fall as a developer preview. Stay tuned!

  We’ll be closing open bugs logged against Developer Preview builds soon, but please keep the feedback coming! If you still see an issue that you filed in the preview tracker, just file a new issue against Android 7.0 in the AOSP issue tracker.

  Thanks for being part of the preview, which we shared earlier this year with an eye towards giving everyone the opportunity to make the next release of Android stronger. Your continued feedback has been extremely beneficial in shaping this final release, not just for users, but for the entire Android ecosystem.

  ]]>

  Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

  

  Android 7.0 Nougat

  Today, Android 7.0 Nougat will begin rolling out to users, starting with Nexus devices. At the same time, we’re pushing the Android 7.0 source code to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), extending public availability of this new version of Android to the broader ecosystem.

  We’ve been working together with you over the past several months to get your feedback on this release, and also to make sure your apps are ready for the users who will run them on Nougat devices.

  What’s inside Nougat

  Android Nougat reflects input from thousands of fans and developers like you, all around the world. There are over 250 major features in Android Nougat, including VR Mode in Android. We’ve worked at all levels of the Android stack in Nougat — from how the operating system reads sensor data to how it sends pixels to the display — to make it especially built to provide high quality mobile VR experiences.

  Plus, Nougat brings a number of new features to help make Android more powerful, more productive and more secure. It introduces a brand new JIT/AOT compiler to improve software performance, make app installs faster, and take up less storage. It also adds platform support for Vulkan, a low-overhead, cross-platform API for high-performance, 3D graphics. Multi-Window support lets users run two apps at the same time, and Direct Reply so users can reply directly to notifications without having to open the app. As always, Android is built with powerful layers of security and encryption to keep your private data private, so Nougat brings new features like File-based encryption, seamless updates, and Direct Boot.

  You can find all of the Nougat developer resources here, including details on behavior changes and new features you can use in your apps. An overview of what's new for developers is available here, and you can explore all of the new user features in Nougat here.

  

  Multi-window mode in Android Nougat

  The next wave of users

  Starting today and rolling out over the next several weeks, the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Pixel C, and General Mobile 4G (Android One) will get an over-the-air software update to Android 7.0 Nougat. Devices enrolled in the Android Beta Program will also receive this final version.

  And there are many tasty devices coming from our partners running Android Nougat, including the upcoming LG V20, which will be the first new smartphone that ships with Android Nougat, right out of the box.

  With all of these new devices beginning to run Nougat, now is the time to publish your app updates to Google Play. We recommend compiling against, and ideally targeting, API 24. If you’re still testing some last minute changes, a great strategy to do this is using Google Play’s beta testing feature to get early feedback from a small group of users — including those using Android 7.0 Nougat — and then doing a staged rollout as you release the updated app to all users.

  What’s next for Nougat?

  We’re moving Nougat into a new regular maintenance schedule over the coming quarters. In fact, we’ve already started work on the first Nougat maintenance release, that will bring continued refinements and polish, and we’re planning to bring that to you this fall as a developer preview. Stay tuned!

  We’ll be closing open bugs logged against Developer Preview builds soon, but please keep the feedback coming! If you still see an issue that you filed in the preview tracker, just file a new issue against Android 7.0 in the AOSP issue tracker.

  Thanks for being part of the preview, which we shared earlier this year with an eye towards giving everyone the opportunity to make the next release of Android stronger. Your continued feedback has been extremely beneficial in shaping this final release, not just for users, but for the entire Android ecosystem.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/taking-the-final-wrapper-off-of-android-7-0-nougat/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/new-features-for-reviews-and-experiments-in-google-play-developer-console-app/ https://googledata.org/google-android/new-features-for-reviews-and-experiments-in-google-play-developer-console-app/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2016 19:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=6cba4c39963a1075a9b08a0a058963da

  Posted by Kobi Glick, Google Play team

  With over one million apps published through the Google Play Developer Console, we know how important it is to publish with confidence, acquire users, learn about them, and manage your business. Whether reacting to a critical performance issue or responding to a negative review, checking on your apps when and where you need to is invaluable.

  The Google Play Developer Console app, launched in May, has already helped thousands of developers stay informed of crucial business updates on the go.

  We’re excited to tell you about new features, available today:

  Receive notifications about new reviews

  

  Use filters to find the reviews you want

  

  Review and apply store listing experiment results

  

  Increase the percent of a staged rollout or halt a bad staged rollout

  

  Download the Developer Console app on Google Play and stay on top of your apps and games, wherever you are! Also, get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

  ]]>

  Posted by Kobi Glick, Google Play team

  With over one million apps published through the Google Play Developer Console, we know how important it is to publish with confidence, acquire users, learn about them, and manage your business. Whether reacting to a critical performance issue or responding to a negative review, checking on your apps when and where you need to is invaluable.

  The Google Play Developer Console app, launched in May, has already helped thousands of developers stay informed of crucial business updates on the go.

  We’re excited to tell you about new features, available today:

  Receive notifications about new reviews

  

  Use filters to find the reviews you want

  

  Review and apply store listing experiment results

  

  Increase the percent of a staged rollout or halt a bad staged rollout

  

  Download the Developer Console app on Google Play and stay on top of your apps and games, wherever you are! Also, get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/new-features-for-reviews-and-experiments-in-google-play-developer-console-app/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-hole19-improves-user-retention-with-android-wear/ https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-hole19-improves-user-retention-with-android-wear/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2016 16:57:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=b6c2d3f71ffb9ff774ad03b7062d4d3c

  Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

  Based in Lisbon, Portugal, Hole19 is a golfing app which assists golfers before, during, and after their golfing journey with GPS and a digital scorecard. The app connects the golfing community with shared statistics for performance and golf courses, and now has close to 1 million users across all platforms.

  Watch Anthony Douglas, Founder & CEO, and Fábio Carballo, Head Android Developer, explain how Hole19 doubled its number of Android Wear users in 6 months, and improved user engagement and retention on the platform. Also, hear how they are using APIs and the latest Wear 2.0 features to connect users to their golfing data and improve the user experience.

  
  

  Learn more how to get started with Android Wear and get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

  ]]>

  Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

  Based in Lisbon, Portugal, Hole19 is a golfing app which assists golfers before, during, and after their golfing journey with GPS and a digital scorecard. The app connects the golfing community with shared statistics for performance and golf courses, and now has close to 1 million users across all platforms.

  Watch Anthony Douglas, Founder & CEO, and Fábio Carballo, Head Android Developer, explain how Hole19 doubled its number of Android Wear users in 6 months, and improved user engagement and retention on the platform. Also, hear how they are using APIs and the latest Wear 2.0 features to connect users to their golfing data and improve the user experience.

  
  

  Learn more how to get started with Android Wear and get the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-hole19-improves-user-retention-with-android-wear/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/expand-your-global-reach-on-google-play-with-new-language-and-country-analytics/ https://googledata.org/google-android/expand-your-global-reach-on-google-play-with-new-language-and-country-analytics/#comments Tue, 09 Aug 2016 17:35:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=77fceea2bb4269cea2dc91228dfd8bf1

  Posted by Rahim Nathwani Product Manager, App Translation Service

  With users in 190 countries around the world, Google Play offers you a truly global audience for your apps and games. Localization is one of the most powerful ways to connect with people in different places, which is why we launched translation support for in-app purchase and Universal App Campaigns earlier this year. With over 30 language translation options available via the Developer Console, we updated our app translation service to help you select the most relevant languages, making it quick and easy to get started.

  With the launch of new language and country analytics, you gain access to app install analysis on Google Play, including:

  • Information on the top languages and countries where apps have been installed, broken down to the level of your app’s category
  • The percentage of installs that come from users of those languages
  • Further information to help inform your go-to-market plans for these countries
  

  To make ordering translations easier, we show language bundles that you can add to your order in a single click.

  To get started, select Manage translations -> Purchase translations from the Store Listing page in the Google Play Developer Console.

  ]]>

  Posted by Rahim Nathwani Product Manager, App Translation Service

  With users in 190 countries around the world, Google Play offers you a truly global audience for your apps and games. Localization is one of the most powerful ways to connect with people in different places, which is why we launched translation support for in-app purchase and Universal App Campaigns earlier this year. With over 30 language translation options available via the Developer Console, we updated our app translation service to help you select the most relevant languages, making it quick and easy to get started.

  With the launch of new language and country analytics, you gain access to app install analysis on Google Play, including:

  • Information on the top languages and countries where apps have been installed, broken down to the level of your app’s category
  • The percentage of installs that come from users of those languages
  • Further information to help inform your go-to-market plans for these countries
  

  To make ordering translations easier, we show language bundles that you can add to your order in a single click.

  To get started, select Manage translations -> Purchase translations from the Store Listing page in the Google Play Developer Console.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/expand-your-global-reach-on-google-play-with-new-language-and-country-analytics/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/5-tips-to-help-you-improve-game-as-a-service-monetization/ https://googledata.org/google-android/5-tips-to-help-you-improve-game-as-a-service-monetization/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2016 19:26:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=565e0a20c913e542d2f5ecf820914501 Posted by Moonlit Wang, Partner Development Manager at Google Play Games, & Tammy Levy, Director of Product for Mobile at Kongregate

  In today’s world of game-as-a-service on mobile, the lifetime value of a player is a lot more complex, where revenue is now the sum of many micro transactions instead of a single purchase with traditional console games.

  Of course you don’t need a sophisticated statistical model to understand that the more time a player invests in your game, and the more money they spend, the greater their LTV. But how can you design and improve monetization as a mobile game developer? Here are 5 tips to help you improve game-as-a-service monetization, with best practice examples from mobile games publisher, Kongregate:

  1. Track player behavior metrics that have a strong and positive correlation with LTV

  D1, D7, D30 retention indicates how well a casual player can be converted into a committed fan.

  Session length and frequency measures user engagement and how fun your game is.

  Completion rate at important milestones can measure and pinpoint churn.

  Buyer and repeated buyer conversion, represents your most valuable user segment.

  2. Optimize for long-term engagement and delight your best players

  Retention is the first metric that can distinguish great games from mediocre ones. Games with higher retention rates throughout the user’ lifecycle, monetize better consistently. Retention is king, and more importantly, long-term retention should be prioritized. Therefore, when designing your game, aim to create a sophisticated and engaging experience to delight your most committed fans.

  
  [This chart shows the retention of top games / apps over time]

  When considering long term retention, focus on achieving a strong D30, but also look beyond the first 30 days. Measure long term retention by assessing the following rates: D30 to D60, D30 to D90, and D30 to D180. The higher the rate, the stickier your game is in the long term, which will increase your LTV.

  Players are willing to pay a fixed amount of money per hour of “fun”, so think about updates when designing your game, to make the content rich and fun for those who will play at very high levels and spend the most time within your game, don’t gate your players or hinder their in-game progression.

  Use the Google Play Games Services - Funnel Report to help you track different milestone completion rates in your games, so you can identify drop off points and reduce churn

  .

  3. Increase buyer conversion through targeted offers

  First-time buyer conversion is the most important as player churn rate drops significantly after the first purchase, but stays relatively flat regardless of the amount spent. Also, past purchase behavior is the best predictor of future purchases. Find your first-time and repeated buyer conversion rate directly in the Developer Console.

  Use A/B testing to find the price that will maximize your total revenue. Different people have different willingness to pay for a given product and the tradeoff between price and quantity is different for different products, so don’t decrease prices blindly.

  Tailor your in-game experience as well as in-app purchase offers based on the player’s predicted probability to spend using the Player Stats API, which predicts players churn and spend.

  For example, in Kongregate’s game Spellstone, testing two pricing points for a promotion called Shard Bot, which provides players with a daily “drip” of Shards (the premium currency) for 30 days, showed players had a much stronger preference for the higher priced pack. The first pack, Shard Bot, priced at $4, granted players 5 daily shards, and the second pack, the Super Shard Bot, was priced at $8 and granted players 10 daily shards.

  
  [Two week test results showing preference for the more expensive pack, which also generated more revenue]

  Kongregate decided to keep the higher priced Super Shard Bot in the store, although both packs resulted in very similar retention rates:

  

  4. As well as what monetization features to implement, take into consideration why, when and how to do so

  Why: “Buyer intent” is most important. Any item with a price tag should serve to enhance your players in-game experience. For example, a new map, a new power, something exciting and additional to the free experience. Don’t gate your players with a purchase-only item as happy users means more time spent with your game, which will lead to higher revenue. Educate users by gifting some free premium goods and currency during the tutorial, and let users experience the benefit first.

  When: Time offers based on when users may need it. If your IAP is to continue gameplay after timeout, then you should surface it right when the timer ends. If your IAP is to offer premium equipment, then you should surface it when users gear up their characters. The offer should be contextually relevant, such that the content should cater to the player’s current status and needs in-game.
  
  In particular, Starter Packs or New Buyer Promos need to be well timed. Players need to understand the value and importance of all the items before they are shown the promotion. If surfaced too early, players will not feel compelled to purchase. If surfaced too late, the offer will not be compelling enough. The Starter Pack should appear within 3 to 5 sessions since install, depending on your game. Additionally, limiting its availability to 3 to 5 days will urge players to make a quicker purchase decision.

  For example, BattleHand’s starter pack is surfaced around the 4th session, it is available for 36hrs and contains the following items to aid players in all areas of the game:

  Powerful cards that have an immediate effect in battle

  High rarity upgrade materials to upgrade your card deck

  A generous amount of soft currency that can be used in all areas of the game

  A generous amount of hard currency so players can purchase premium store items

  Rare upgrade materials for Heroes

  
  [Example starter pack offer in Battle Hands] Thanks to the strength of the promotion over 50% of players choose the Starter Pack instead of the regular gems offerings:
  

  How: There are many ways you can implement premium content and goods in your game, such as power-ups, characters, equipment, maps, hints, chapters etc. The two most impactful monetization designs are:

  Gacha - There are many ways to design, present and balance gacha but the key is to have randomized rewards, which allows you to sell extremely powerful items that players want without having to charge really high prices per purchase.

  
  [Example of randomized rewards in Raid Brigade’s boxes]

  LiveOps - Limited time content on a regular cadence will also create really compelling opportunities for the players to both engage further with the game and invest in the game. For instance, Adventure Capitalist has been releasing regular limited themed time events with their spin on the permanent content, their own progression, achievements and IAP promotions.

  
  [Example timed event for Adventure Capitalist]

  Through this initiative, the game has seen regular increases in both engagement and revenue during event times without affecting the non-event periods:

  
  [Timed events drastically increase engagement and revenue without lowering the baseline average over time]

  5. Take into account local prices and pricing models

  Just like different people have different willingness-to-pay, different markets have different purchasing powers.

  • Test what price points make sense for local consumers in each major market. Don’t just apply an umbrella discount, find the price points that maximize total revenue.
  • Consider charm pricing but remember it doesn’t work everywhere. For example, in the United States, prices always end in $x.99, but that’s not the case in Japan and Korea, where rounded numbers are used. Pricing in accordance to the local norm signals to the customers that you care and designed the game with them in mind. The Google Developer Console now automatically applies local pricing conventions of each currency for you.

  Check out the Android Developer Story from games developer, Divmob, who improved their game’s monetization threefold simply by adopting sub-dollar pricing strategies. Also, learn more best practices about building for billions to get more tips on monetization.

  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 Moonlit Wang, Partner Development Manager at Google Play Games, & Tammy Levy, Director of Product for Mobile at Kongregate

  In today’s world of game-as-a-service on mobile, the lifetime value of a player is a lot more complex, where revenue is now the sum of many micro transactions instead of a single purchase with traditional console games.

  Of course you don’t need a sophisticated statistical model to understand that the more time a player invests in your game, and the more money they spend, the greater their LTV. But how can you design and improve monetization as a mobile game developer? Here are 5 tips to help you improve game-as-a-service monetization, with best practice examples from mobile games publisher, Kongregate:

  1. Track player behavior metrics that have a strong and positive correlation with LTV

  D1, D7, D30 retention indicates how well a casual player can be converted into a committed fan.

  Session length and frequency measures user engagement and how fun your game is.

  Completion rate at important milestones can measure and pinpoint churn.

  Buyer and repeated buyer conversion, represents your most valuable user segment.

  2. Optimize for long-term engagement and delight your best players

  Retention is the first metric that can distinguish great games from mediocre ones. Games with higher retention rates throughout the user’ lifecycle, monetize better consistently. Retention is king, and more importantly, long-term retention should be prioritized. Therefore, when designing your game, aim to create a sophisticated and engaging experience to delight your most committed fans.

  
  [This chart shows the retention of top games / apps over time]

  When considering long term retention, focus on achieving a strong D30, but also look beyond the first 30 days. Measure long term retention by assessing the following rates: D30 to D60, D30 to D90, and D30 to D180. The higher the rate, the stickier your game is in the long term, which will increase your LTV.

  Players are willing to pay a fixed amount of money per hour of “fun”, so think about updates when designing your game, to make the content rich and fun for those who will play at very high levels and spend the most time within your game, don’t gate your players or hinder their in-game progression.

  Use the Google Play Games Services - Funnel Report to help you track different milestone completion rates in your games, so you can identify drop off points and reduce churn

  .

  3. Increase buyer conversion through targeted offers

  First-time buyer conversion is the most important as player churn rate drops significantly after the first purchase, but stays relatively flat regardless of the amount spent. Also, past purchase behavior is the best predictor of future purchases. Find your first-time and repeated buyer conversion rate directly in the Developer Console.

  Use A/B testing to find the price that will maximize your total revenue. Different people have different willingness to pay for a given product and the tradeoff between price and quantity is different for different products, so don’t decrease prices blindly.

  Tailor your in-game experience as well as in-app purchase offers based on the player’s predicted probability to spend using the Player Stats API, which predicts players churn and spend.

  For example, in Kongregate’s game Spellstone, testing two pricing points for a promotion called Shard Bot, which provides players with a daily “drip” of Shards (the premium currency) for 30 days, showed players had a much stronger preference for the higher priced pack. The first pack, Shard Bot, priced at $4, granted players 5 daily shards, and the second pack, the Super Shard Bot, was priced at $8 and granted players 10 daily shards.

  
  [Two week test results showing preference for the more expensive pack, which also generated more revenue]

  Kongregate decided to keep the higher priced Super Shard Bot in the store, although both packs resulted in very similar retention rates:

  

  4. As well as what monetization features to implement, take into consideration why, when and how to do so

  Why: “Buyer intent” is most important. Any item with a price tag should serve to enhance your players in-game experience. For example, a new map, a new power, something exciting and additional to the free experience. Don’t gate your players with a purchase-only item as happy users means more time spent with your game, which will lead to higher revenue. Educate users by gifting some free premium goods and currency during the tutorial, and let users experience the benefit first.

  When: Time offers based on when users may need it. If your IAP is to continue gameplay after timeout, then you should surface it right when the timer ends. If your IAP is to offer premium equipment, then you should surface it when users gear up their characters. The offer should be contextually relevant, such that the content should cater to the player’s current status and needs in-game.
  
  In particular, Starter Packs or New Buyer Promos need to be well timed. Players need to understand the value and importance of all the items before they are shown the promotion. If surfaced too early, players will not feel compelled to purchase. If surfaced too late, the offer will not be compelling enough. The Starter Pack should appear within 3 to 5 sessions since install, depending on your game. Additionally, limiting its availability to 3 to 5 days will urge players to make a quicker purchase decision.

  For example, BattleHand’s starter pack is surfaced around the 4th session, it is available for 36hrs and contains the following items to aid players in all areas of the game:

  Powerful cards that have an immediate effect in battle

  High rarity upgrade materials to upgrade your card deck

  A generous amount of soft currency that can be used in all areas of the game

  A generous amount of hard currency so players can purchase premium store items

  Rare upgrade materials for Heroes

  
  [Example starter pack offer in Battle Hands] Thanks to the strength of the promotion over 50% of players choose the Starter Pack instead of the regular gems offerings:
  

  How: There are many ways you can implement premium content and goods in your game, such as power-ups, characters, equipment, maps, hints, chapters etc. The two most impactful monetization designs are:

  Gacha - There are many ways to design, present and balance gacha but the key is to have randomized rewards, which allows you to sell extremely powerful items that players want without having to charge really high prices per purchase.

  
  [Example of randomized rewards in Raid Brigade’s boxes]

  LiveOps - Limited time content on a regular cadence will also create really compelling opportunities for the players to both engage further with the game and invest in the game. For instance, Adventure Capitalist has been releasing regular limited themed time events with their spin on the permanent content, their own progression, achievements and IAP promotions.

  
  [Example timed event for Adventure Capitalist]

  Through this initiative, the game has seen regular increases in both engagement and revenue during event times without affecting the non-event periods:

  
  [Timed events drastically increase engagement and revenue without lowering the baseline average over time]

  5. Take into account local prices and pricing models

  Just like different people have different willingness-to-pay, different markets have different purchasing powers.

  • Test what price points make sense for local consumers in each major market. Don’t just apply an umbrella discount, find the price points that maximize total revenue.
  • Consider charm pricing but remember it doesn’t work everywhere. For example, in the United States, prices always end in $x.99, but that’s not the case in Japan and Korea, where rounded numbers are used. Pricing in accordance to the local norm signals to the customers that you care and designed the game with them in mind. The Google Developer Console now automatically applies local pricing conventions of each currency for you.

  Check out the Android Developer Story from games developer, Divmob, who improved their game’s monetization threefold simply by adopting sub-dollar pricing strategies. Also, learn more best practices about building for billions to get more tips on monetization.

  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.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/5-tips-to-help-you-improve-game-as-a-service-monetization/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-android-add-ons-for-docs-and-sheets/ https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-android-add-ons-for-docs-and-sheets/#comments Thu, 28 Jul 2016 17:12:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=0d98719b800dd1c2e437624cc0408cc6
  Posted by By Saurabh Gupta, Product Manager, Google Apps
  
  We know many of you consider your mobile device as your primary tool to consume business information, but what if you could use it to get more work done, from anywhere? We’re excited to introduce Android add-ons for Docs and Sheets, a new way for you to do just that—whether it’s readying a contract you have for e-signature from your phone, or pulling in CRM data on your tablet for some quick analysis while waiting for your morning coffee, Android add-ons can help you accomplish more.
  
  

  Get more done with your favorite third-party apps, no matter where you are

  We’ve worked with eight integration partners who have created seamless integrations for Docs and Sheets. Here’s a preview of just a few of them:

  • DocuSign - Trigger or complete a signing process from Docs or Sheets, and save the executed document to Drive. Read more here.

  DocuSign lets you easily create signature envelopes right from Google Docs

  • ProsperWorks - Import your CRM data to create and update advanced dashboards, reports and graphs on Sheets, right from your device. Read more here.
  • AppSheet - Create powerful mobile apps directly from your data in Sheets instantly — no coding required. Read more here.
  • Scanbot - Scan your business documents using built-in OCR, and insert their contents into Docs as editable text. Read more here.

  
  
  You can find these add-ons and many more, including PandaDoc, ZohoCRM, Teacher Aide, EasyBib and Classroom in our Google Play collection as well as directly from the add-on menus in Docs or Sheets.

  

  
  
  Try them out today, and see how much more you can do.
  
  
  

  Calling all developers: try our developer preview today!

  As you can see from above, Android add-ons offer a great opportunity to build innovative integrations and reach Docs and Sheets users around the world. They’re basically Android apps that connect with Google Apps Script projects on the server-side, allowing them to access and manipulate data from Google Docs or Sheets using standard Apps Script techniques. Check out our documentation which includes UI guidelines as well as sample code to get you started. We’ve also made it easy for you to publish your apps with the Apps Script editor.

  Android add-ons are available today as a developer preview. We look forward to seeing what you build!

  ]]>
  Posted by By Saurabh Gupta, Product Manager, Google Apps
  
  We know many of you consider your mobile device as your primary tool to consume business information, but what if you could use it to get more work done, from anywhere? We’re excited to introduce Android add-ons for Docs and Sheets, a new way for you to do just that—whether it’s readying a contract you have for e-signature from your phone, or pulling in CRM data on your tablet for some quick analysis while waiting for your morning coffee, Android add-ons can help you accomplish more.
  
  

  Get more done with your favorite third-party apps, no matter where you are

  We’ve worked with eight integration partners who have created seamless integrations for Docs and Sheets. Here’s a preview of just a few of them:

  • DocuSign - Trigger or complete a signing process from Docs or Sheets, and save the executed document to Drive. Read more here.

  DocuSign lets you easily create signature envelopes right from Google Docs

  • ProsperWorks - Import your CRM data to create and update advanced dashboards, reports and graphs on Sheets, right from your device. Read more here.
  • AppSheet - Create powerful mobile apps directly from your data in Sheets instantly — no coding required. Read more here.
  • Scanbot - Scan your business documents using built-in OCR, and insert their contents into Docs as editable text. Read more here.

  
  
  You can find these add-ons and many more, including PandaDoc, ZohoCRM, Teacher Aide, EasyBib and Classroom in our Google Play collection as well as directly from the add-on menus in Docs or Sheets.

  

  
  
  Try them out today, and see how much more you can do.
  
  
  

  Calling all developers: try our developer preview today!

  As you can see from above, Android add-ons offer a great opportunity to build innovative integrations and reach Docs and Sheets users around the world. They’re basically Android apps that connect with Google Apps Script projects on the server-side, allowing them to access and manipulate data from Google Docs or Sheets using standard Apps Script techniques. Check out our documentation which includes UI guidelines as well as sample code to get you started. We’ve also made it easy for you to publish your apps with the Apps Script editor.

  Android add-ons are available today as a developer preview. We look forward to seeing what you build!

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/announcing-android-add-ons-for-docs-and-sheets/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/protecting-android-with-more-linux-kernel-defenses/ https://googledata.org/google-android/protecting-android-with-more-linux-kernel-defenses/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2016 21:13:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=1a7f8d7637eb72d304378b76e17c65d0

  Posted by Jeff Vander Stoep, Android Security team

  Android relies heavily on the Linux kernel for enforcement of its security model. To better protect the kernel, we’ve enabled a number of mechanisms within Android. At a high level these protections are grouped into two categories—memory protections and attack surface reduction.

  Memory protections

  One of the major security features provided by the kernel is memory protection for userspace processes in the form of address space separation. Unlike userspace processes, the kernel’s various tasks live within one address space and a vulnerability anywhere in the kernel can potentially impact unrelated portions of the system’s memory. Kernel memory protections are designed to maintain the integrity of the kernel in spite of vulnerabilities.

  Mark memory as read-only/no-execute

  This feature segments kernel memory into logical sections and sets restrictive page access permissions on each section. Code is marked as read only + execute. Data sections are marked as no-execute and further segmented into read-only and read-write sections. This feature is enabled with config option CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA. It was put together by Kees Cook and is based on a subset of Grsecurity’s KERNEXEC feature by Brad Spengler and Qualcomm’s CONFIG_STRICT_MEMORY_RWX feature by Larry Bassel and Laura Abbott. CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA landed in the upstream kernel for arm/arm64 and has been backported to Android’s 3.18+ arm/arm64 common kernel.

  Restrict kernel access to userspace

  This feature improves protection of the kernel by preventing it from directly accessing userspace memory. This can make a number of attacks more difficult because attackers have significantly less control over kernel memory that is executable, particularly with CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA enabled. Similar features were already in existence, the earliest being Grsecurity’s UDEREF. This feature is enabled with config option CONFIG_CPU_SW_DOMAIN_PAN and was implemented by Russell King for ARMv7 and backported to Android’s 4.1 kernel by Kees Cook.

  Improve protection against stack buffer overflows

  Much like its predecessor, stack-protector, stack-protector-strong protects against stack buffer overflows, but additionally provides coverage for more array types, as the original only protected character arrays. Stack-protector-strong was implemented by Han Shen and added to the gcc 4.9 compiler.

  Attack surface reduction

  Attack surface reduction attempts to expose fewer entry points to the kernel without breaking legitimate functionality. Reducing attack surface can include removing code, removing access to entry points, or selectively exposing features.

  Remove default access to debug features

  The kernel’s perf system provides infrastructure for performance measurement and can be used for analyzing both the kernel and userspace applications. Perf is a valuable tool for developers, but adds unnecessary attack surface for the vast majority of Android users. In Android Nougat, access to perf will be blocked by default. Developers may still access perf by enabling developer settings and using adb to set a property: “adb shell setprop security.perf_harden 0”.

  The patchset for blocking access to perf may be broken down into kernel and userspace sections. The kernel patch is by Ben Hutchings and is derived from Grsecurity’s CONFIG_GRKERNSEC_PERF_HARDEN by Brad Spengler. The userspace changes were contributed by Daniel Micay. Thanks to Wish Wu and others for responsibly disclosing security vulnerabilities in perf.

  Restrict app access to ioctl commands

  Much of Android security model is described and enforced by SELinux. The ioctl() syscall represented a major gap in the granularity of enforcement via SELinux. Ioctl command whitelisting with SELinux was added as a means to provide per-command control over the ioctl syscall by SELinux.

  Most of the kernel vulnerabilities reported on Android occur in drivers and are reached using the ioctl syscall, for example CVE-2016-0820. Some ioctl commands are needed by third-party applications, however most are not and access can be restricted without breaking legitimate functionality. In Android Nougat, only a small whitelist of socket ioctl commands are available to applications. For select devices, applications’ access to GPU ioctls has been similarly restricted.

  Require seccomp-bpf

  Seccomp provides an additional sandboxing mechanism allowing a process to restrict the syscalls and syscall arguments available using a configurable filter. Restricting the availability of syscalls can dramatically cut down on the exposed attack surface of the kernel. Since seccomp was first introduced on Nexus devices in Lollipop, its availability across the Android ecosystem has steadily improved. With Android Nougat, seccomp support is a requirement for all devices. On Android Nougat we are using seccomp on the mediaextractor and mediacodec processes as part of the media hardening effort.

  Ongoing efforts

  There are other projects underway aimed at protecting the kernel:

  • The Kernel Self Protection Project is developing runtime and compiler defenses for the upstream kernel.
  • Further sandbox tightening and attack surface reduction with SELinux is ongoing in AOSP.
  • Minijail provides a convenient mechanism for applying many containment and sandboxing features offered by the kernel, including seccomp filters and namespaces.
  • Projects like kasan and kcov help fuzzers discover the root cause of crashes and to intelligently construct test cases that increase code coverage—ultimately resulting in a more efficient bug hunting process.

  Due to these efforts and others, we expect the security of the kernel to continue improving. As always, we appreciate feedback on our work and welcome suggestions for how we can improve Android. Contact us at security@android.com.

  ]]>

  Posted by Jeff Vander Stoep, Android Security team

  Android relies heavily on the Linux kernel for enforcement of its security model. To better protect the kernel, we’ve enabled a number of mechanisms within Android. At a high level these protections are grouped into two categories—memory protections and attack surface reduction.

  Memory protections

  One of the major security features provided by the kernel is memory protection for userspace processes in the form of address space separation. Unlike userspace processes, the kernel’s various tasks live within one address space and a vulnerability anywhere in the kernel can potentially impact unrelated portions of the system’s memory. Kernel memory protections are designed to maintain the integrity of the kernel in spite of vulnerabilities.

  Mark memory as read-only/no-execute

  This feature segments kernel memory into logical sections and sets restrictive page access permissions on each section. Code is marked as read only + execute. Data sections are marked as no-execute and further segmented into read-only and read-write sections. This feature is enabled with config option CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA. It was put together by Kees Cook and is based on a subset of Grsecurity’s KERNEXEC feature by Brad Spengler and Qualcomm’s CONFIG_STRICT_MEMORY_RWX feature by Larry Bassel and Laura Abbott. CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA landed in the upstream kernel for arm/arm64 and has been backported to Android’s 3.18+ arm/arm64 common kernel.

  Restrict kernel access to userspace

  This feature improves protection of the kernel by preventing it from directly accessing userspace memory. This can make a number of attacks more difficult because attackers have significantly less control over kernel memory that is executable, particularly with CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA enabled. Similar features were already in existence, the earliest being Grsecurity’s UDEREF. This feature is enabled with config option CONFIG_CPU_SW_DOMAIN_PAN and was implemented by Russell King for ARMv7 and backported to Android’s 4.1 kernel by Kees Cook.

  Improve protection against stack buffer overflows

  Much like its predecessor, stack-protector, stack-protector-strong protects against stack buffer overflows, but additionally provides coverage for more array types, as the original only protected character arrays. Stack-protector-strong was implemented by Han Shen and added to the gcc 4.9 compiler.

  Attack surface reduction

  Attack surface reduction attempts to expose fewer entry points to the kernel without breaking legitimate functionality. Reducing attack surface can include removing code, removing access to entry points, or selectively exposing features.

  Remove default access to debug features

  The kernel’s perf system provides infrastructure for performance measurement and can be used for analyzing both the kernel and userspace applications. Perf is a valuable tool for developers, but adds unnecessary attack surface for the vast majority of Android users. In Android Nougat, access to perf will be blocked by default. Developers may still access perf by enabling developer settings and using adb to set a property: “adb shell setprop security.perf_harden 0”.

  The patchset for blocking access to perf may be broken down into kernel and userspace sections. The kernel patch is by Ben Hutchings and is derived from Grsecurity’s CONFIG_GRKERNSEC_PERF_HARDEN by Brad Spengler. The userspace changes were contributed by Daniel Micay. Thanks to Wish Wu and others for responsibly disclosing security vulnerabilities in perf.

  Restrict app access to ioctl commands

  Much of Android security model is described and enforced by SELinux. The ioctl() syscall represented a major gap in the granularity of enforcement via SELinux. Ioctl command whitelisting with SELinux was added as a means to provide per-command control over the ioctl syscall by SELinux.

  Most of the kernel vulnerabilities reported on Android occur in drivers and are reached using the ioctl syscall, for example CVE-2016-0820. Some ioctl commands are needed by third-party applications, however most are not and access can be restricted without breaking legitimate functionality. In Android Nougat, only a small whitelist of socket ioctl commands are available to applications. For select devices, applications’ access to GPU ioctls has been similarly restricted.

  Require seccomp-bpf

  Seccomp provides an additional sandboxing mechanism allowing a process to restrict the syscalls and syscall arguments available using a configurable filter. Restricting the availability of syscalls can dramatically cut down on the exposed attack surface of the kernel. Since seccomp was first introduced on Nexus devices in Lollipop, its availability across the Android ecosystem has steadily improved. With Android Nougat, seccomp support is a requirement for all devices. On Android Nougat we are using seccomp on the mediaextractor and mediacodec processes as part of the media hardening effort.

  Ongoing efforts

  There are other projects underway aimed at protecting the kernel:

  • The Kernel Self Protection Project is developing runtime and compiler defenses for the upstream kernel.
  • Further sandbox tightening and attack surface reduction with SELinux is ongoing in AOSP.
  • Minijail provides a convenient mechanism for applying many containment and sandboxing features offered by the kernel, including seccomp filters and namespaces.
  • Projects like kasan and kcov help fuzzers discover the root cause of crashes and to intelligently construct test cases that increase code coverage—ultimately resulting in a more efficient bug hunting process.

  Due to these efforts and others, we expect the security of the kernel to continue improving. As always, we appreciate feedback on our work and welcome suggestions for how we can improve Android. Contact us at security@android.com.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/protecting-android-with-more-linux-kernel-defenses/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-culture-alley-reaches-millions-of-english-learners-on-google-play/ https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-culture-alley-reaches-millions-of-english-learners-on-google-play/#comments Wed, 27 Jul 2016 16:38:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=6a5cc4192cb5d739274fa09483fbb455 Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

  Culture Alley developed the app Hello English to help Indians learn English through gamification, supporting over 15 dialects. More than 13 million people now use Hello English in India and around the world.

  Hear Nishant Patni, Founder & CEO and Pranshu Bhandari, Co-Founder, explain how they optimized the app to address challenges faced by emerging markets. Learn how they used various Google Play tools to address varying levels of connectivity and device capabilities, and improve user retention.

  Learn more best practices about building for billions and watch the ‘10 tips to build an app for billions of users’ video to get more tips. 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 Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

  Culture Alley developed the app Hello English to help Indians learn English through gamification, supporting over 15 dialects. More than 13 million people now use Hello English in India and around the world.

  Hear Nishant Patni, Founder & CEO and Pranshu Bhandari, Co-Founder, explain how they optimized the app to address challenges faced by emerging markets. Learn how they used various Google Play tools to address varying levels of connectivity and device capabilities, and improve user retention.

  Learn more best practices about building for billions and watch the ‘10 tips to build an app for billions of users’ video to get more tips. 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.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/android-developer-story-culture-alley-reaches-millions-of-english-learners-on-google-play/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/introducing-new-app-categories-from-art-to-autos-to-dating-to-help-users-better-find-your-apps/ https://googledata.org/google-android/introducing-new-app-categories-from-art-to-autos-to-dating-to-help-users-better-find-your-apps/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2016 22:14:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=cf7d611e8996c16bc11a42face9526e2

  Posted by By Sarah Karam, Google Play Apps Business Development

  With more than 1 billion active users in 190 countries around the world, Google Play continues to be an important distribution platform for you to build a global audience. To help you get your apps in front of more users, it’s important to make them more quickly and easily discoverable in Google Play. That’s why we rolled out major features, such as Search Ads, Indie Corner, store listing experiments, and more, over the past year.

  To improve the overall search experience, we’re introducing new app categories and renaming a few existing ones, making them more comprehensive and relevant to what users are looking for today.

  The new categories include:

  • Art & Design
  • Auto & Vehicles
  • Beauty
  • Dating
  • Events
  • Food & Drink
  • House & Home
  • Parenting

  In addition, the “Transportation” category will be renamed “Maps & Navigation,” and the “Media & Video” category will be renamed “Video Players & Editors.”

  To select a new category for your app or game

  1. Sign in to your Google Play Developer Console.
  2. Select an app.
  3. On the left menu, click Store Listing.
  4. Under "Categorization," select an application type and category.
  5. Near the top of the page, click Save draft (new apps) or Submit update (existing apps).

  Newly added categories will be available on Google Play within 60 days. If you choose a newly added category for an app before the category is available for users, your current app category may change. See additional details and view our full list of categories in the Help Center.

  ]]>

  Posted by By Sarah Karam, Google Play Apps Business Development

  With more than 1 billion active users in 190 countries around the world, Google Play continues to be an important distribution platform for you to build a global audience. To help you get your apps in front of more users, it’s important to make them more quickly and easily discoverable in Google Play. That’s why we rolled out major features, such as Search Ads, Indie Corner, store listing experiments, and more, over the past year.

  To improve the overall search experience, we’re introducing new app categories and renaming a few existing ones, making them more comprehensive and relevant to what users are looking for today.

  The new categories include:

  • Art & Design
  • Auto & Vehicles
  • Beauty
  • Dating
  • Events
  • Food & Drink
  • House & Home
  • Parenting

  In addition, the “Transportation” category will be renamed “Maps & Navigation,” and the “Media & Video” category will be renamed “Video Players & Editors.”

  To select a new category for your app or game

  1. Sign in to your Google Play Developer Console.
  2. Select an app.
  3. On the left menu, click Store Listing.
  4. Under "Categorization," select an application type and category.
  5. Near the top of the page, click Save draft (new apps) or Submit update (existing apps).

  Newly added categories will be available on Google Play within 60 days. If you choose a newly added category for an app before the category is available for users, your current app category may change. See additional details and view our full list of categories in the Help Center.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/introducing-new-app-categories-from-art-to-autos-to-dating-to-help-users-better-find-your-apps/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/improvements-for-smaller-app-downloads-on-google-play/ https://googledata.org/google-android/improvements-for-smaller-app-downloads-on-google-play/#comments Fri, 22 Jul 2016 17:55:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=6e43527e70c74f6af5a31659644e6754

  Posted by Anthony Morris, SWE Google Play and Andrew Hayden, software engineer

  Google Play continues to grow rapidly, as Android users installed over 65 billion apps in the last year from the Google Play Store. We’re also seeing developers move to update their apps more frequently to push great new content, patch security vulnerabilities, and iterate quickly on user feedback.

  However, many users are sensitive to the amount of data they use, especially if they are not on Wi-Fi. Google Play is investing in improvements to reduce the data that needs to be transferred for app installs and updates, while making data cost more transparent to users.

  Read on to understand the updates and learn some tips for ways to optimize the size of your APK.

  New Delta algorithm to reduce the size of app updates

  For approximately 98% of app updates from the Play Store, only changes (deltas) to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing files, reducing the size of updates. Google Play has used delta algorithms since 2012, and we recently rolled out an additional delta algorithm, bsdiff (created by Colin Percival¹), that our experimentation shows can reduce delta size by up to 50% or more compared to the previous algorithm for some APKs. Bsdiff is specifically targeted to produce more efficient deltas of native libraries by taking advantage of the specific ways in which compiled native code changes between versions. To be most effective, native libraries should be stored uncompressed (compression interferes with delta algorithms).

  An example from Chrome:

  Patch Description	Previous patch size	Bsdiff Size
  M46 to M47 major update	22.8 MB	12.9 MB
  M47 minor update	15.3 MB	3.6 MB

  Apps that don’t have uncompressed native libraries can see a 5% decrease in size on average, compared to the previous delta algorithm.

  Applying the delta algorithm to APK Expansion Files to further reduce update size

  APK Expansion Files allow you to include additional large files up to 2GB in size (e.g. high resolution graphics or media files) with your app, which is especially popular with games. We have recently expanded our delta and compression algorithms to apply to these APK Expansion Files in addition to APKs, reducing the download size of initial installs by 12%, and updates by 65% on average. APK Expansion file patches use the xdelta algorithm.

  Clearer size information in the Play Store

  Alongside the improvements to reduce download size, we also made information displayed about data used and download sizes in the Play Store clearer. You can now see actual download sizes, not the APK file size, in the Play Store. If you already have an app, you will only see the update size. These changes are rolling out now.

  ---

  1. Colin Percival, Naive differences of executable code, http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/, 2003. ↩

  
  Example 1: Showing new “Download size” of APK
  
  Example 2: Showing new “Update size” of APK

  Tips to reduce your download sizes

  1. Optimize for the right size measurements: Users care about download size (i.e. how many bytes are transferred when installing/updating an app), and they care about disk size (i.e. how much space the app takes up on disk). It’s important to note that neither of these are the same as the original APK file size nor necessarily correlated.

  
  Chrome example:

  	Compressed Native Library	Uncompressed Native Library
  APK Size	39MB	52MB (+25%)
  Download size (install)	29MB	29MB (no change)
  Download size (update)	29MB	21MB (-29%)
  Disk size	71MB	52MB (-26%)

  
  

  Chrome found that initial download size remained the same by not compressing the native library in their APK, while the APK size increased, because Google Play already performs compression for downloads. They also found that the update size decreased, as deltas are more effective with uncompressed files, and disk size decreased as you no longer need an compressed copy of the native library. However, please note, native libraries should only be uncompressed when the minimum SDK version for an APK is 23 (Marshmallow) or later.

  2. Reduce your APK size: Remove unnecessary data from the APK like unused resources and code.

  3. Optimize parts of your APK to make them smaller: Using more efficient file formats, for example by using WebP instead of JPEG, or by using Proguard to remove unused code.

  Read more about reducing APK sizes and watch the I/O 2016 session ‘Putting Your App on a Diet’ to learn from Wojtek Kaliciński, about how to reduce the size of your APK. ]]>

  Posted by Anthony Morris, SWE Google Play and Andrew Hayden, software engineer

  Google Play continues to grow rapidly, as Android users installed over 65 billion apps in the last year from the Google Play Store. We’re also seeing developers move to update their apps more frequently to push great new content, patch security vulnerabilities, and iterate quickly on user feedback.

  However, many users are sensitive to the amount of data they use, especially if they are not on Wi-Fi. Google Play is investing in improvements to reduce the data that needs to be transferred for app installs and updates, while making data cost more transparent to users.

  Read on to understand the updates and learn some tips for ways to optimize the size of your APK.

  New Delta algorithm to reduce the size of app updates

  For approximately 98% of app updates from the Play Store, only changes (deltas) to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing files, reducing the size of updates. Google Play has used delta algorithms since 2012, and we recently rolled out an additional delta algorithm, bsdiff (created by Colin Percival¹), that our experimentation shows can reduce delta size by up to 50% or more compared to the previous algorithm for some APKs. Bsdiff is specifically targeted to produce more efficient deltas of native libraries by taking advantage of the specific ways in which compiled native code changes between versions. To be most effective, native libraries should be stored uncompressed (compression interferes with delta algorithms).

  An example from Chrome:

  Patch Description	Previous patch size	Bsdiff Size
  M46 to M47 major update	22.8 MB	12.9 MB
  M47 minor update	15.3 MB	3.6 MB

  Apps that don’t have uncompressed native libraries can see a 5% decrease in size on average, compared to the previous delta algorithm.

  Applying the delta algorithm to APK Expansion Files to further reduce update size

  APK Expansion Files allow you to include additional large files up to 2GB in size (e.g. high resolution graphics or media files) with your app, which is especially popular with games. We have recently expanded our delta and compression algorithms to apply to these APK Expansion Files in addition to APKs, reducing the download size of initial installs by 12%, and updates by 65% on average. APK Expansion file patches use the xdelta algorithm.

  Clearer size information in the Play Store

  Alongside the improvements to reduce download size, we also made information displayed about data used and download sizes in the Play Store clearer. You can now see actual download sizes, not the APK file size, in the Play Store. If you already have an app, you will only see the update size. These changes are rolling out now.

  ---

  1. Colin Percival, Naive differences of executable code, http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/, 2003. ↩

  
  Example 1: Showing new “Download size” of APK
  
  Example 2: Showing new “Update size” of APK

  Tips to reduce your download sizes

  1. Optimize for the right size measurements: Users care about download size (i.e. how many bytes are transferred when installing/updating an app), and they care about disk size (i.e. how much space the app takes up on disk). It’s important to note that neither of these are the same as the original APK file size nor necessarily correlated.

  
  Chrome example:

  	Compressed Native Library	Uncompressed Native Library
  APK Size	39MB	52MB (+25%)
  Download size (install)	29MB	29MB (no change)
  Download size (update)	29MB	21MB (-29%)
  Disk size	71MB	52MB (-26%)

  
  

  Chrome found that initial download size remained the same by not compressing the native library in their APK, while the APK size increased, because Google Play already performs compression for downloads. They also found that the update size decreased, as deltas are more effective with uncompressed files, and disk size decreased as you no longer need an compressed copy of the native library. However, please note, native libraries should only be uncompressed when the minimum SDK version for an APK is 23 (Marshmallow) or later.

  2. Reduce your APK size: Remove unnecessary data from the APK like unused resources and code.

  3. Optimize parts of your APK to make them smaller: Using more efficient file formats, for example by using WebP instead of JPEG, or by using Proguard to remove unused code.

  Read more about reducing APK sizes and watch the I/O 2016 session ‘Putting Your App on a Diet’ to learn from Wojtek Kaliciński, about how to reduce the size of your APK.
  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/improvements-for-smaller-app-downloads-on-google-play/feed/ 0 https://googledata.org/google-android/connecting-your-app-to-a-wi-fi-device/ https://googledata.org/google-android/connecting-your-app-to-a-wi-fi-device/#comments Wed, 20 Jul 2016 17:21:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=566273eca2193a59a7441f50993c7c1d

  Posted by Rich Hyndman, Android Developer Advocate

  With the growth of the Internet of Things, connecting Android applications to Wi-Fi enabled devices is becoming more and more common. Whether you’re building an app for a remote viewfinder, to set up a connected light bulb, or to control a quadcopter, if it’s Wi-Fi based you will need to connect to a hotspot that may not have Internet connectivity.

  From Lollipop onwards the OS became a little more intelligent, allowing multiple network connections and not routing data to networks that don’t have Internet connectivity. That’s very useful for users as they don’t lose connectivity when they’re near Wi-Fis with captive portals. Data routing APIs were added for developers, so you can ensure that only the appropriate app traffic is routed over the Wi-Fi connection to the external device.

  To make the APIs easier to understand, it is good to know that there are 3 sets of networks available to developers:

  • WiFiManager#startScan returns a list of available Wi-Fi networks. They are primarily identified by SSID.
  • WiFiManager#getConfiguredNetworks returns a list of the Wi-Fi networks configured on the device, also indexed by SSID, but they are not necessarily currently available.
  • ConnectivityManager#getAllNetworks returns a list of networks that are being interacted with by the phone. This is necessary as from Lollipop onwards a device may be connected to multiple networks at once, Wi-Fi, LTE, Bluetooth, etc… The current state of each is available by calling ConnectivityManager#getNetworkInfo and is identified by a network ID.

  In all versions of Android you start by scanning for available Wi-Fi networks with WiFiManager#startScan, iterate through the ScanResults looking for the SSID of your external Wi-Fi device. Once you’ve found it you can check if it is already a configured network using WifiManager#getConfiguredNetworks and iterating through the WifiConfigurations returned, matching on SSID. It’s worth noting that the SSIDs of the configured networks are enclosed in double quotes, whilst the SSIDs returned in ScanResults are not.

  If your network is configured you can obtain the network ID from the WifiConfiguration object. Otherwise you can configure it using WifiManager#addNetwork and keep track of the network id that is returned.

  To connect to the Wi-Fi network, register a BroadcastReceiver that listens for WifiManager.NETWORK_STATE_CHANGED_ACTION and then call WifiManager.enableNetwork (int netId, boolean disableOthers), passing in your network ID. The enableNetwork call disables all the other Wi-Fi access points for the next scan, locates the one you’ve requested and connects to it. When you receive the network broadcasts you can check with WifiManager#getConnectionInfo that you’re successfully connected to the correct network. But, on Lollipop and above, if that network doesn’t have internet connectivity network, requests will not be routed to it.

  Routing network requests

  To direct all the network requests from your app to an external Wi-Fi device, call ConnectivityManager#setProcessDefaultNetwork on Lollipop devices, and on Marshmallow call ConnectivityManager#bindProcessToNetwork instead, which is a direct API replacement. Note that these calls require android.permission.INTERNET; otherwise they will just return false.

  Alternatively, if you’d like to route some of your app traffic to the Wi-Fi device and some to the Internet over the mobile network:

  • For HTTP requests you can use Network#openConnection(java.net.URL), directly routing your request to this network.
  • For low-level socket communication, open a socket and call Network#bindSocket(java.net.Socket), or alternatively use Network#getSocketFactory.

  Now you can keep your users connected whilst they benefit from your innovative Wi-Fi enabled products.

  ]]>

  Posted by Rich Hyndman, Android Developer Advocate

  With the growth of the Internet of Things, connecting Android applications to Wi-Fi enabled devices is becoming more and more common. Whether you’re building an app for a remote viewfinder, to set up a connected light bulb, or to control a quadcopter, if it’s Wi-Fi based you will need to connect to a hotspot that may not have Internet connectivity.

  From Lollipop onwards the OS became a little more intelligent, allowing multiple network connections and not routing data to networks that don’t have Internet connectivity. That’s very useful for users as they don’t lose connectivity when they’re near Wi-Fis with captive portals. Data routing APIs were added for developers, so you can ensure that only the appropriate app traffic is routed over the Wi-Fi connection to the external device.

  To make the APIs easier to understand, it is good to know that there are 3 sets of networks available to developers:

  • WiFiManager#startScan returns a list of available Wi-Fi networks. They are primarily identified by SSID.
  • WiFiManager#getConfiguredNetworks returns a list of the Wi-Fi networks configured on the device, also indexed by SSID, but they are not necessarily currently available.
  • ConnectivityManager#getAllNetworks returns a list of networks that are being interacted with by the phone. This is necessary as from Lollipop onwards a device may be connected to multiple networks at once, Wi-Fi, LTE, Bluetooth, etc… The current state of each is available by calling ConnectivityManager#getNetworkInfo and is identified by a network ID.

  In all versions of Android you start by scanning for available Wi-Fi networks with WiFiManager#startScan, iterate through the ScanResults looking for the SSID of your external Wi-Fi device. Once you’ve found it you can check if it is already a configured network using WifiManager#getConfiguredNetworks and iterating through the WifiConfigurations returned, matching on SSID. It’s worth noting that the SSIDs of the configured networks are enclosed in double quotes, whilst the SSIDs returned in ScanResults are not.

  If your network is configured you can obtain the network ID from the WifiConfiguration object. Otherwise you can configure it using WifiManager#addNetwork and keep track of the network id that is returned.

  To connect to the Wi-Fi network, register a BroadcastReceiver that listens for WifiManager.NETWORK_STATE_CHANGED_ACTION and then call WifiManager.enableNetwork (int netId, boolean disableOthers), passing in your network ID. The enableNetwork call disables all the other Wi-Fi access points for the next scan, locates the one you’ve requested and connects to it. When you receive the network broadcasts you can check with WifiManager#getConnectionInfo that you’re successfully connected to the correct network. But, on Lollipop and above, if that network doesn’t have internet connectivity network, requests will not be routed to it.

  Routing network requests

  To direct all the network requests from your app to an external Wi-Fi device, call ConnectivityManager#setProcessDefaultNetwork on Lollipop devices, and on Marshmallow call ConnectivityManager#bindProcessToNetwork instead, which is a direct API replacement. Note that these calls require android.permission.INTERNET; otherwise they will just return false.

  Alternatively, if you’d like to route some of your app traffic to the Wi-Fi device and some to the Internet over the mobile network:

  • For HTTP requests you can use Network#openConnection(java.net.URL), directly routing your request to this network.
  • For low-level socket communication, open a socket and call Network#bindSocket(java.net.Socket), or alternatively use Network#getSocketFactory.

  Now you can keep your users connected whilst they benefit from your innovative Wi-Fi enabled products.

  ]]> https://googledata.org/google-android/connecting-your-app-to-a-wi-fi-device/feed/ 0