Android at Google I/O 2015

Google I/O 2015 was held on May 28-29 at Moscone West in San Francisco, California. There were a lot of Android announcements and updates during I/O. Here are some of the updates related to Android.

Android M

Android M is the newest version of Android. It aims to improve the core user experience of Android and has big changes to the fundamentals of the platform.

What's New in Android M

New features include App Permisssions, Doze, App Links, Fingerprint support, and more. For development, new updates include Android Design Support Library, Google Play Services 7.5 (Smart Lock for Passwords, App Invites, and more), Android Studio 1.3 with NDK and C/C++ support, Data Binding, Google Cloud Messaging 3.0, among others. Also announced were Cloud Test Lab, Android Pay, and Brillo and Weave. Brillo extends the Android platform to connected devices while Weave is the IOT protocol for everything.

Android M Developer Preview

Google also released Developer Preview of Android M for Nexus 5, 6, 9, and Player. You can download the system image at https://developer.android.com/preview and flash it to your device. There will be OTA updates for the preview before they launch the official version in the third quarter of the year.

If you want to start playing around with the new APIs of Android M, you should download Android M (API 22, MNC Preview) packages using your SDK manager and use Android Studio 1.3 (available in the Canary channel). You can also check out the API Overview and samples

When creating new projects, you should use MNC: Android M (Preview) as the mimimum SDK. For existing projects, you can update your build.gradle file with the following values:

compileSdkVersion:'android-MNC'
minSdkVersion:'MNC'
targetSdkVersion:'MNC'

Android Training

Google announced Android Nanodegree. They also announced new Android training courses:

• Android App Development for Beginners
• Advanced Android App Development
• Android Ubiquitous Computing
• Android Performance
• Android Design for Developers
• Gradle for Android and Java
• Google Play Services: Location
• Google Play services: Analytics
• Google Play Services: AdMob
• Google Play Services: Maps
• Google Play Services: Identity

They also announced http://medium.com/google-developers, a collection of Medium Articles written by Google Developers. One of the things you should check out is the Developing for Android Article Series.

I/O Videos

In the keynote, there were a lot of Android announcements. The keynote is available for watching here. You can also watch videos of Android-related I/O sessions and 100 Days of Google Dev videos here.

Android @ #io15 YouTube Playlist

US Trip: CA and TX

I went back to the United States from May 24 to June 6 to attend the GDG Organizer Summit and Google I/O 2015, and to visit my aunt in Dumas, Texas and Celine's aunts in West Covina, California.

I left Manila on May 24 via Eva Air and arrived in Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport for a short lay-over. It was my first time in Taiwan. I walked and looked around in the airport before our flight to San Francisco. After arriving to San Francisco Airport, I took the hotel shuttle to stay at Aloft San Francisco Airport. I walked to the nearby BART station to go to Downtown San Francisco. I met with a former officemate to have dinner and to buy a prepaid SIM card.

The next day, I went to SFO to meet up with the other GDG organizers and took the shuttle to DoubleTree Hilton San Jose. I went to the venue of our summit, Computer History Museum for a technical rehearsal of talks (I have a demo of the GDG Watch Face on the second day). In the evening, we had dinner with GDG organizers in APAC.

On May 26 and 27, we had the GDG Global Organizer Summit 2015. After the second day, we went straight to Moscone to register and get our I/O badges for Google I/O (May 28-29). I roamed around San Francisco on May 30 before my midnight flight to Texas. There is a short lay-over in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas before the flight to Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport in Amarillo, Texas. My aunt and her husband picked me up in the airport and we went to Dumas, Texas. Texas is the third US state I have been to.

I left Texas to go to LA on June 4. My lay-over was in Denver International Airport in Denver, Colorado (Colorado is the fourth US state I have been to though I was just in the airport). Then, I went to Celine's aunts in LA before going back to Philippines.

Google I/O 2015

I was able to attend Google I/O 2015 which was held at Moscone West in San Francisco, California on May 28 and 29.

It's really a different experience to watch the I/O keynote live. If you haven't watched the keynote here, you can watch it here. You can also videos of the sessions and more at https://events.google.com/io2015/videos.

After the keynote, we were given the new Cardboard. Then, we went on to the different sessions and talks happening at the same time. Like last year, I went to most of the talks (instead of the sessions which are being livestreamed and recorded). Most of the talks though have a lot of interested participants and the space is not enough for everyone.

There were a lot of cool stuff announced at I/O: Android M Developer Preview, Android Pay, Chrome Custom Tabs, Brillo and Weave, Cardboard Expeditions, Google Photos, ATAP's projects (Jacquard, Soli, Vault, Abacus, Ara), and many more.

The video below shows the highlights of this year's Google I/O

Attending Google I/O is really a great learning experience. I'm looking forward to cool stuff I could build next.