If
you’ve not been following Android as keenly as us over the last six years, here
are the names Google has already used:
- Android 1.0 and 1.1 had no
fun codename
- Android 1.5 Cupcake
- Android 1.6 Donut
- Android 2.0/2.1 Eclair
- Android 2.3 Gingerbread
- Android 3.0 Honeycomb
- Android 4.0 Ice Cream
Sandwich
- Android 4.1/4.2/4.3 Jelly
Bean
- Android 4.4 KitKat
The next version of Android has been unveiled and it’s
called “Android Lollipop” version
5.0 or 4.5. Will it be called lemon pie or Lion Bar? The new software has
undergone re-design with a new objective
in mind. It will be used across desktop and mobiles. Across Smartphones,
tablets, laptops, TVs, computers and much more.
Whether it is called Android 5.0
or Android 4.5, the release of the next version of the Android OS will be big news. It’s the software that will power the phones set to do battle with the iPhone6, and shows us the way Android phones are headed, in
terms what features we’ll see developed in the future.
What else does Android L offer? The notifications screen is more interactive than ever. Users
will be able to see, expand, and interact with notifications and also the
ability to respond to the messages. Apple’s surprise jump to 64-bit. Qualcomm
even forcing the industry to get its rise and fast track the switch from 32-bit
to 64-bit. This is why Android L has been designed with 64-bit chips in mind.
Google will release the Android L preview code to the developers. The
consumer-ready build potentially called Android Lollipop is scheduled for
release during Quarter4. Expecting Google's Nexus handsets to be first in line
for updates.
The new, key elements developers now have at their disposal.
·
Security-personal unlocking: Google said that security is a key element for Android and its users. A
new feature will enable users to unlock their smartphone when physically near
enough a device like an Android Wear smartwatch.
· Enhanced notifications : Android’s always been
good with the notifications. It set the benchmark for how to do them. Android Lollipop
including better Visibility Controls and Heads up Notifications this time.
· Android Runtime (ART) : The Lollipop
Developer Preview introduces the Android Runtime (ART) as the system default.
ART offers ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation, more efficient garbage collection,
and improved development and debugging features. In many cases it improves
performance of the device with no action required by the developer.
·
Material Design : Material Design is a
complete overhaul of how Android looks, how it functions and how the user,
interact with it. As per Google announcement the system is incredibly flexible,
brand with bold colors and a with responsive User Interface patterns and themeable elements.
· Project Volta : Google promises that Android L will bring a new battery saving mode.
Project Volta will allow developers to identify how their apps are using
battery so they make improvements. Google said that the new battery saving mode
will give a Nexus 5 an extra 90 minutes of power. Google wants to make phone and
tablet batteries last longer. In order to give developers a better idea of how
battery-hungry their app is, Google has developed a new tool called “Battery Historian” which lets you know how your app is
using battery.
· BLE Peripheral Mode : Applications can use this capability to broadcast their presence
to nearby devices.
· Advanced camera capabilities : There are a bunch of
new camera centric APIs in Android Lollipop, but the most interesting that lets
developers capture raw sensor data and control parameters such as ISO
sensitivity, frame duration , exposure time and on a per-frame basis.
· Gaming : support for OpenGL ES
3.1 , and support for compute shaders, stencil textures, and texture gather for
your games. Couple this with Android Extension Pack (AEP), a new set of
extensions to OpenGL ES, and is basically console-grade gaming. Games will be
able to take advantage of tessellation and geometry shaders, PC and console
gaming, and use ASTC texture compression across multiple GPU technologies.
· 64-bit support : To support apps using
native code, Google has confirmed it is releasing an updated NDK that includes
64-bit support. The L Developer Preview adds support for 64-bit ABIs, for
additional address space and improved performance with certain compute
workloads. Apps written in Java language can run
immediately on 64-bit architectures without any modifications required.
· Performance: As we expected, Android Lollipop will support 64-bit processors and it
will also support the ART software which Google says will be twice as fast as
Davik.
However, the next version of Android will be shown off
Google I/O 2014. This is a developer conference held in San Francisco each year.
We’ll
see Android 5.0 for the first time in the next gen Nexus devices. Google is rumoured
to be bringing us a Nexus 6 phone, a new 8-inch Nexus 8 tablet and a refreshed
Nexus 10.
Thank you..
Thank you..
