Google has today launched the latest update to the Android Wear OS, bumping it from version 1.3 to 1.4 (the companion app got an update in November, which tipped us off that this firmware update was on the way). Among other features, this version of the OS enables support for the speaker hardware that was previously discovered on the Huawei Watch and the ASUS ZenWatch 2…
Android Studio 1.0
Google has today released Android Studio 1.4 in the stable update channel. As has been the case since the software was first released in beta just about a month ago, the update features new design tools such as vector assets, a theme editor, new project template features, new performance monitors, and more…
Some of the new design tools, as outlined at the Android Developers blog:
Vector Assets:
Starting with API 21, you can use Vector Drawables for image assets. For most apps, using VectorDrawables decreases the amount of density dependent drawables you need to maintain, and will also give you sharp image assets regardless of the screen device densities your app supports.
Theme Editor:
We understand that managing your app theme and style can be a bit complex. With Android Studio 1.4, we are releasing a preview of the Theme Editor to help with this task. This first version of the Theme Editor is focused on editing and updating the material theme colors (
colors.xml) in your app project.
Project Templates:
We know many of you use the New Project Wizard app templates to start a new app project or to quickly add an activity to an existing app. To help with the visual design of your apps, we updated the app templates to include the Android Design Support Library alongside the AppCompat Support library.
There are also two new monitors: You’ll find one for GPU rendering and another for networking, which can monitor both GPU rending performance and the network usage of your app, respectively. Finally, Google says that it’s making taking advantage of a Firebase mobile backend even easier with the latest version.
You can grab Android Studio at the Google Developer website, and if you already have it installed, you’ll find that version 1.4 should be available right now.
