developer

Cyanogen OS is the popular operating system from the team behind CyanogenMod that ships on devices such as the OnePlus One and Wiley Fox. Cyanogen OS offers a handful of features that its aftermarket CyanogenMod ROM solution doesn’t, in large part to make the OS more consumer friendly. Today, however, Cyanogen announced that it is making the added features of Cyanogen OS available as a separate download for users not running the operating system.

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In a blog post, Google today has announced that three new Android Marshmallow sample applications have gone live. The applications are, as usual, available through the Google Samples repository on Github and through the Android Studio samples browser. The apps include Android Direct Share, Android MidiSynth, and Android MidiScope.

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Google finally introduced to the world the next version of Android, dubbed Android M for the moment, at its Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco. And while the currently-available version may be a developer preview (and those who are developers likely wouldn’t need this guide), many who aren’t as familiar with how to flash factory images might want to try the latest build of the mobile OS as well.

That’s why we made this guide. If you have the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, or Nexus Player (and possibly others in the future), there’s a build of Android M available for you to install prior to the update’s official unveiling later this year. Be warned however, as this is a very early build of the OS and is riddled with bugs, glitches, and overall performance jankiness. If that doesn’t sway you, though, keep reading…
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Google’s Tango tablet

Earlier this week, Google made its Project Tango tablet available to everyone via the Google Store for $512. While many expected this price drop and public availability to lead to a successor at Google I/O, the company kept quiet and didn’t address its Tango initiative. Nevertheless, Qualcomm this evening has taken the wraps off of its own Tango smartphone platform powered by the Snapdragon 810.

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Google’s Project Tango initiative was originally introduced last year alongside a tablet with “advanced vision capabilities.” Until today, the tablet had only been available with an invite, but now the device is listed on the Google Store for anyone to purchase (via Android Police). Google dropped the price of the tablet for invitees to $512 earlier this year and that’s also the price for which the device is available on the Play Store.

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According to a report this afternoon from Bloomberg, “people familiar with the matter” have said that Google is preparing to give Android users more control over what data gets shared with their apps. Users will, at some point in the near future, have “more detailed choices” over which pieces of their information that apps have access to:

Google’s Android operating system is set to give users more detailed choices over what apps can access, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter remains private. That could include photos, contacts or location. An announcement of the change, which would put Android closer in line with Apple Inc.’s iOS, is expected for Google’s developer’s conference in San Francisco this month, one of the people said.

More than likely, this is a feature that Google will be announcing alongside Android “M” at this year’s Google I/O conference which is set to kick off at the end of the month.

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Today Google released a new Chrome Dev app, a way for developers to access the latest Chrome builds and experimental features before they’re ready for beta and public releases.

Google has always had a developer release channel for Chrome, allowing devs to get access to the latest builds and features even before regular users are encouraged to start testing through its beta and public release channels. Previously the dev channel was only for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS, but today the company is bringing it to Android.

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Samsung made a very bold attempt at entering the now-somewhat-established smartwatch space—long before the current market leaders—with the launch of their Galaxy Gear devices, but none of these wearables ever made very much of an impact. And since these devices came several months before Android Wear even existed, they ran Samsung’s proprietary Tizen operating system, which many users have agreed is notoriously clunky and unintuitive.

Now, a developer on the XDA-Developers forum has started work on porting Android Wear to the Galaxy Gear 2, and it looks like the OS is already partially functional…
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Google Glass is definitely in limbo right now, but as I talked about earlier this week, it’s far too early to say that the project is dead in the water. Those of us that had consumer interest in the project are curious enough about what the future might hold, but what about those who have been investing in development for the platform for two years now? Google—unsurprisingly—says there’s still value in developing for Glass, but also that some changes to the developer experience are incoming…

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[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m0!4v1416448266011!6m8!1m7!1s9WgYUb5quXDjqqFd3DWI6A!2m2!1d46.41438376976309!2d10.01394735785013!3f210!4f10!5f0.7820865974627469&w=704&h=400]

Google, in a post on the Geo Developers Blog, today announced the ability for website owners to embed Street View panoramas and Photospheres within their site using an HTML snippet. Google launched this feature for Maps last year, but only today did it add support for Street View and public Photospheres.

Today, we added the ability to easily embed the Street View and Photo Sphere images you find in Google Maps and we’re also enabling the same capabilities programmatically in the Google Maps Embed API. These embeds use the new imagery viewer technology that powers Street View in the new Google Maps.

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Earlier this month, Google started accepting Android TV app submissions to the Play Store, but today, another detail about the app submission process was revealed. According to the Android developer documentation page, Google will pre-screen and approve all submitted Android TV apps. After the approval process, the apps will then be distributed for download on the Play Store (via Android Police).

Before distributing apps to the Play Store on Android TV devices, our team reviews apps for usability with a DPAD (apps) and Gamepad (games only) and other quality guidelines.

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Google today announced that a major update to Play Services is now rolled out, bumping it from version 4.4 to 5.0. Many of the details in this update were announced at Google I/O last week, but the company also broke everything down in blog post today, as well. The update began rolling out after I/O, but now is entirely rolled out to devices world-wide.

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Google has just announced a official development kit for its Project Tango. The tablet is incredibly powerful, packing an NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor and 4GB of RAM. It’s also got 128GB of storage under the hood. There’s also all kinds of sensors, insulting motion tracking cameras, integrated depth sending, and LTE. There are three cameras on the back of the device for motion tracking, too.

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[vimeo 91688685 w=700 h=365]

Matias Duarte — the man behind the design of every version of Android since Ice Cream Sandwich — recently took the stage with Joshua Topolsky of The Verge at the Accel Design Conference in San Francisco to participate in a fireside chat on topics ranging from Android, the future of mobile, design methodology, and wearables.

The video is available on Vimeo (via AndroidPolice), and includes 37 minutes of talk between the two. The beginning covers Duarte’s thoughts on design methodology, and he stresses that good design is always a middle ground between appearance, emotional appeal, and usability — perhaps a shot at iOS 7’s stark interface.
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2OEKL1w__4]

The first Project Ara developer conference kicks off at 8:30 AM Pacific Time this morning, and will take place today and tomorrow. While Project Ara was originally developed inside of Motorola, the project is still owned and operated by Google. While Google’s sale of Motorola to Lenovo will soon be completed, the Advanced Technology And Products (ATAP) team behind Project Ara is one part of the company that Google is holding on to. Project Ara’s goal is to create a smartphone with interchangeable components and the developer conference will also see the release of the Ara Module Developers’ kit:
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Samsung has just announced that it will be hosting its first developer conference later this year in San Francisco. While we assume that the event would include typical developer sessions for Samsung’s Android/TouchWiz devices, it looks like we’ll also be getting a look at the latest from across the company’s other product lines as well. Samsung isn’t saying much, but it is teasing “what’s next” for developers, hinting that we’ll be seeing at least some new developments with its SDK and developer tools.

The event is scheduled to take place at Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco from October 27-29. Registration isn’t yet open, and no specific details on what we’ll be seeing at the event, but you can sign up on Samsung’s website now to get notified when more information becomes available.

Google released a preview for all developers, as promised at Google I/O, showing off the update to the Google Play Developer Console—the website that allows developers of Android apps to manage them. A select amount of developers was able to preview it over the summer; and now, Google said in a blog post today every developer is able to try it out. The website has been updated with an overall speed increase and features an updated UI that is much easier to manage. “It’s bright and appealing to look at, easy to find your way around using navigation and search, and it loads quickly even if you have a lot of apps,” said Google.

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Google has posted more information on their Android Developers Blog this afternoon shedding more light on prepping Honeycomb apps for the release of Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich is due out in the coming months, as confirmed by Eric Schmidt. Google outlines the main problem that needs to be addressed is that Honeycomb apps are set to be on a larger screen, and since Ice Cream Sandwich will be on smaller screens there needs to be changes.

So, if you’ve developed a tablet app on Honeycomb, it’s important that your app do one of two things: prevent installation on smaller screens or (preferably) support smaller screens with the same APK.

Obviously, you could choose to only have your app run on a larger screen, but in most cases we’d imagine you’d want it compatible on both a small or big screen. We’ll save you from getting the code from us, so we’ll direct you to Google’s full post.