Google I/O 2015: Keynote, Android M Preview, Develop, Engage, and Earn - Insight

Google I/O is two days of inspirational talks, hands-on learning, and a chance to hear more about Google's latest developer products. 8th annual Google I/O conference, joined by 5,600 developers at Moscone Center, 530 I/O Extended communities around the world, and millions via the I/O Live stream. This year’s event is focused on delivering incredible experiences on mobile and helping developers build successful businesses through these key themes: Develop, Engage, and Earn.

During the keynote, we had a number of announcements that covered the evolution of the mobile platform, tools for Android, iOS, and Web developers, and the push towards more immersive mobile experiences with VR. Here’s a closer look at the news:

Develop

• Android M Developer Preview — Get an early look at the next version of Android.
• Google Play services 7.5 — Check out new features like Smart Lock for Passwords, new APIs for Google Cloud Messaging and
• Google Cast, and the Google Maps API on Android Wear devices.
• Android Studio 1.3 — Preview Android Studio v1.3, now with improved Gradle build speed, a new memory profiler, and full editing and debugging support for C/C++.
• Polymer 1.0 — As the first production-ready release for the web components library, we’re also adding new product lines of elements. Features range from toolbars and menus to offline caching.
• iOS & CocoaPods — Access your favorite libraries via CocoaPods, the official distribution channel for Google SDKs on iOS.
• Cloud Test Lab — Building on the technology from our acquisition of Appurify, cloud Test Lab automates the testing of your mobile apps.
• Firebase — Firebase makes it easy to build apps quickly, without spinning up servers or writing server-side code.

Engage

• App Indexing — Index your app’s content into Google Search, just like you would with a website. Available for Android, and now piloting on iOS.
• Google Cloud Messaging — As one of the most popular ways to send messages from the cloud to user's devices on Android and Chrome, GCM is now also available on iOS.
• Engagement on the Web — Access previously unavailable native functionality on the web with push notifications from your mobile website and add to homescreen.
• Empowering successful global businesses on Google Play — Get new and powerful tools to help you further grow your business, improve decision making based on smarter insights, and engage and retain a valuable user base.
• Universal App Campaigns coming soon — Set up app install ads with just a few inputs like your budget and the cost you’re willing to pay per user--we take care of the rest.
• Measure App Installs Ads with Google Analytics — Measure app install campaigns based on engagement and lifetime value. On iOS, Google Analytics is now integrated with 20+ ad networks making it easy to understand how to spend your acquisition budget.

Earn

• AdMob — Monetize your apps intelligently on a single platform, so you can gain insights about your users, drive more in-app purchases and maximize your ad revenue.

What’s Next

• Android Nanodegree — Enroll in the industry's first Android Nanodegree, developed in collaboration with Udacity. The curriculum was built from the ground up s to meet the high standard we have for Android development. The Nanodegree covers everything from fundamentals to advanced development skills, as well as Google Play services and Material Design.
• Cardboard SDK — The Cardboard SDK for Unity now supports both Android and iOS.

Here some my Note at Google I/O

Android M

Today at Google I/O, we announced a developer preview of the next version of Android, the M release. Last year’s developer preview was a first for Android and we received great feedback. We want to continue to give you developers early access to Android so you have time to get your apps ready for the next version of Android. This time with the M Developer Preview, we will provide a clear timeline for testing and feedback plus more updates to the preview build.
 

The Android M release: improving the fundamentals

For the M release, we focused on improving the core user experience of Android, from fixing thousands of bugs, to making some big changes to the fundamentals of the platform:

Permissions - We are giving users control of app permissions in the M release. Apps can trigger requests for permissions at runtime, in the right context, and users can choose whether to grant the permission. Making permission requests right when they’re needed means users can get up and running in your app faster. Also, users have easy access to manage all their app permissions in settings. On M, as a developer, you should design your app to prompt for permissions in context and account for permissions that don’t get granted. As more devices upgrade to M, app permission behavior will be a critical development flow to test.

App links - We are making it even easier to link between apps. Android has always allowed apps to register to natively handle URLs. Now you can add an autoVerify attribute to your app manifest so that users can be linked deep into your native app without any disambiguation prompt. App links, along with App Indexing for Google search, make it easier for users to discover and re-engage with your app.

 Battery - We’re making Android devices smarter about managing power through a new feature called Doze. With M, Android uses significant motion detection to learn if a device has been left unattended for a while. In this state, Android will exponentially back off background activity, trading off a little bit of app freshness for longer battery life. Consider how this may affect your app; for instance, if you’re building a chat app, you may want to make use of high priority messages to wake your app when the device is dozing.

The Android M release: advancing assistance and payments

Now on tap - We are making it even easier for Android users to get assistance with Now on tap -- whenever they need it, wherever they are on their device. For example, if your friend texts you about dinner at a new restaurant, without leaving the app, you can ask Google Now for help. Using just that context, Google can find menus, reviews, help you book a table, navigate there, and deep link you into relevant apps. As a developer, you can implement App Indexing for Google search to let users discover and re-engage with your app through Now on tap.

Speech Recognition Accuracy and Deep Neutral Networks On Google Search.
Example if you say on Google Search " movies this weekend? " it recognize it and it will show movies available now.

Android Pay & Fingerprint - We’ve built on our work with Near Field Communications (NFC) in Gingerbread and Host Card Emulation in Kitkat to develop Android Pay. Android Pay will enable Android users to simply and securely use their Android phone to pay in stores or in thousands of Android Pay partner apps.

With M, native fingerprint support enhances Android Pay by allowing users to confirm a purchase with their fingerprint. Moreover, fingerprint on M can be used to unlock devices and make purchases on Google Play. 

With new APIs in M, it’s easy for you to add fingerprint authorization to your app and have it work consistently across a range of devices and sensors.
These are just a few highlights from the M Developer Preview that we announced today. The M preview will be available for download right after the keynote.

The M Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with tools, system images for testing on the official Android emulator, and system images for testing on Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, and Nexus Player devices. We are excited to expand the program and give you more time to ensure your apps support M when it launches this fall. Based on your feedback, we plan to update the M Developer preview system images often during the developer preview program. The sooner we hear from you, the more feedback we can integrate, so let us know!

To get started with the M Developer Preview and prepare your apps for the full release, just follow these steps:

1. Update to Android Studio v1.3+ Preview
2. Visit the M Developer Preview site for downloads and documentation.
3. Explore the new APIs & App Permissions changes
4. Explore the Android Design Support Library & Google Play Services APIs
5. Get the emulator system images through the SDK Manager or download the Nexus device system images.
6. Test your app with your supported Nexus device or emulator
7. Give us feedback

Always-on and Wi-Fi with the latest Android Wear update

A new update to Android Wear is rolling out with lots of new features like always-on apps, Wi-Fi connectivity, media browsing, emoji input, and more. Let’s discuss some of the great new capabilities that are available in this release.

 

Always-on apps

Above all, a watch should make it easy to tell the time. That's why most Android Wear watches have always-on displays, so you can see the time without having to shake your wrist or lift your arm to wake up the display. In this release, we're making it possible for apps to be always-on as well.

With always-on functionality, your app can display dynamic data on the device, even when the app is in ambient mode. This is useful if your app displays information that is continuously updated. For example, running apps like Endomondo, MapMyRun, and Runtastic use the always-on screen to let you keep track of how long and far you’ve been running. Zillow keeps you posted about the median price of homes nearby when you’re house-hunting.

Over 4000 plus  Android Wear apps

Always-on functionality is also useful for apps that may not update data very frequently, but present information that’s useful for reference over a longer period of time. For example, Bring! lets you keep your shopping list right on your wrist, and Golfshot gives you accurate distances from tee to pin. If you’re at the airport and making your way to your gate, American Airlines, Delta, and KLM let you keep all of your flight info a glance away on your watch.

Note: the above apps will not display always-on functionality on your watch until you receive the update for the latest version of Android Wear.

Wi-Fi connectivity and cloud sync

Many existing Android Wear devices already contain hardware support for Wi-Fi, and this release enables software support for Wi-Fi. The saved Wi-Fi networks on your phone are copied to your watch during setup, and your watch automatically connects to those Wi-Fi networks when it loses Bluetooth connection to your phone. Your watch can then connect to your phone over the Internet, even if they’re not on the same Wi-Fi network.

Wayne Piekarski, Developer Advocate

 

Multi-wearable support

The release of Google Play services 7.3 now allows support for multiple wearable devices to be paired simultaneously to a single phone or tablet, so you can have a wearable for fitness, and another for dressing up. While DataItems will continue to work in the same way, since they are synchronized to all devices, working with the MessageApi is a little different. When you update your build.gradle to use version 7.3 or higher, getConnectedNodes() from the NodeApi will usually return multiple nodes. There is an extra virtual node added to represent the cloud node used to communicate over Wi-Fi, so all developers need to deal with this situation in their code.

Google is looking forward the possibilities to improve connect and control all in a single device

  WEAVE - a cross platform let different device understand a command function.

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Google Maps Offline - recently Google introduce YouTube offline in some country like India , Vietnam, and Philippines. Now Google start rolling out Google Maps Offline , to reduce mobile data. Now, navigate the real World Offline and Online. Starting later this year. (Polymer 1.0)

+Taylor Savage, Product Manager, Polymer

1.0 version of the Polymer library. Polymer is a new way of thinking about building web applications - a sugaring layer on top of Web Components, making it easy for you to create interoperable custom elements. These elements can then be put together to create app-like immersive experiences on the web.

Since the “Developer Preview” release, we’ve re-written the library from the ground up, focusing on cross-browser performance while keeping the developer-friendly ergonomics. The new library is about 3x faster on Chrome, 4x faster on Safari, and a third less code than in developer preview. And it’s ready to be used in production applications.