Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Android 4.3 and Updated Developer Tools


Posted by Dave Burke, Engineering Director, Android Platform

Today in San Fran we announced Android 4.3, a sweeter version of Jelly Bn that includes grt new ftures for users and developers. Android 4.3 powers the new 7 tablet that's coming soon to Google Play and retail outlets, and it’s rolling out now as an update to 4, 7, 10, and Galaxy HSPA+ devices across the world.

For developers, Android 4.3 includes the latest performance enhancements to keep your apps fast, smooth, and efficient, together with new APIs and capabilities to use in your apps. Here's a taste of what's new:


OpenGL ES 3.0 — Game developers can now take advantage of OpenGL ES 3.0 and EGL extensions as standard ftures of Android, with access from either framework or native APIs.
Bluetooth Smart — Now your apps can communie with the many types of low-power Bluetooth Smart devices and sensors available today, to provide new ftures for fitness, medical, loion, proximity, and more.
Restricted profiles — Tablet owners can crte restricted profiles to limit access to apps, for family, friends, kiosks, and more. Your app can offer various types of restrictions to let tablet owners control its capabilities in ch profile.
New media capabilities — A modular DRM framework enables media appliion developers to more sily integrate DRM into their own strming protocols such as MPEG DASH. Apps can also access a built-in VP8 enr from framework or native APIs for high-quality capture.
Notifiion access — Your apps can now access and interact with the strm of status bar notifiions as they are posted. You can display them in any way you want, including routing them to nrby Bluetooth devices, and you can update and dismiss notifiions as needed.
Improved profiling tools — New tags in the Systrace tool and on-screen GPU profiling give you new ways to build grt performance into your app.


Check out the Android 4.3 platform highlights for a complete overview of what’s new for developers. To rd more about the new APIs and how to use them, take a look at the API Overview or watch the new DevBytes s.

Along with the new Android 4.3 platform we’re relsing an update to the Android NDK (r9). The new NDK gives you native access to the OpenGL ES 3.0 APIs and other stable APIs in Android 4.3, so if you use high-performance graphics in your games or apps, make sure to check it out.

Last, we’ve updated the Android Support Library (r18) with several APIs to help you build grt apps with broad compatibility. Most important, we've added an Action Bar API to let you build this essential Android design pattern into your app with compatibility back to Android 2.1. For apps targeting RTL languages, there's a new BidiFormatter utility you can use to manage RTL strings with compatibility back to Android 2.1. Also, watch for a new RenderScript fture coming soon that will let you take advantage of hardware-accelerated computation with compatibility back to Android 2.2.

You can get started developing and testing on Android 4.3 right away, in Android Studio or in ADT/Ant. You can download the Android 4.3 Platform (API level 18), as well as the SDK Tools, Platform Tools, and Support Library from the Android SDK Manager. Join the discussion on



+Android Developers

No comments:

Post a Comment