Google Data

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.

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!

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

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.

Posted by Hoi Lam, Developer
Advocate

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.

Other additions in Developer Preview 3

Developer Preview 3 also includes:

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 .

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.

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 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.

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 Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

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.

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 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 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 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 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

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]

.

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.

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

[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:

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

[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.

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.