Google has just announced the release of the first developer preview for Android P mobile operating system, as the company is looking for feedback from developers who can use the official Android emulator, as well as images for Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, and Pixel 2XL devices for testing
Google will take into account comments from developers before finalizing the APIs and features. That won’t be the only preview however, as the company plans to release other developer previews planned before the stable release at the end of the year, and Google aims to reveal more at Google I/O 2018 next week.
Some of the interesting changes and new features found in Android P so far:
- Indoor positioning with Wi-Fi RTT (Round Trip Time) also known as 802.11mc WiFi protocol
- Display cutout support for some of the new phones with a notch
- Improved messaging notifications, for example highlighting who is messaging and how you can reply. The conversations, photos and stickers can now be displayed in notifications.
- Multi-camera API – Support for simultaneous access of two or more cameras, meaning features like seamless zoom, bokeh, and stereo vision are now supported natively
- HDR VP9 Video, HEIF image compression, and Media APIs
- Neural Networks API 1.1 adding support for nine new ops — Pad, BatchToSpaceND, SpaceToBatchND, Transpose, Strided Slice, Mean, Div, Sub, and Squeeze. Qualcomm Hexagon HVX is now also supported (in Pixel 2)
- Security and privacy improvements – More consistent UI for fingerprint authentication, defaults for Network Security Configuration to block all cleartext (unencrypted HTTP) traffic, access restriction to mic, camera, and all SensorManager sensors from apps that are idle.
- ART performance – reductions up to 11% of DEX file leading to faster load times.
There are also many other changes, and you can find the full list on Android developer website.
To get started, download the P Developer Preview SDK and tools into Android Studio 3.1 or Android Studio 3.2 canary version. Pixel devices owners can manually install the preview images following the instructions here.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Which if any Access Points support 802.11mc WiFi protocol today? Any model for home use available? Like Mesh AP?
Google are fragmenting Android to much, in my opinion. They should mature the OS, and anything else add as apps.
@Harley
I’ve just tried to look for this, and it’s not really a commonly advertised features. I can see some Intel cards and Marvell Avastar chips support 802.11mc.
Android P developer preview 3 has just been released. API level is now 28, and Beta 2 images are now available for Pixel phones and devices from partners as listed in the post above. See https://developer.android.com/preview/release-notes for details.