Yesterday Google Formally Announced Android P. The First Developer Preview Is Now Available.
This Build Is Not Released To The Android Beta Program, So You'll Need To Flash It Manually. It's Also Only Available For Pixel And Pixel 2 Phones, And It Will Not Be Supported By The Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, And Pixel C.
What's New? 🚀
Improved Messaging Notifications
In Android P We've Put A Priority On Improving Visibility And Function In Notifications. Try The New MessagingStyle Notification Style -- It Highlights Who Is Messaging And How You Can Reply. You Can Show Conversations, Attach Photos And Stickers, And Even Suggest Smart Replies.
Multi-camera API
You Can Now Access Streams Simultaneously From Two Or More Physical Cameras On Devices Running Android P. On Devices With Either Dual-front Or Dual-back Cameras, You Can Create Innovative Features Not Possible With Just A Single Camera, Such As Seamless Zoom, Bokeh, And Stereo Vision. The API Also Lets You Call A Logical Or Fused Camera Stream That Automatically Switches Between Two Or More Cameras.
Other Improvements In Camera Include New Session Parameters That Help To Reduce Delays During Initial Capture, And Surface Sharing That Lets Camera Clients Handle Various Use-cases Without The Need To Stop And Start Camera Streaming. We've Also Added APIs For Display-based Flash Support And Access To OIS Timestamps For App-level Image Stabilization And Special Effects.
ImageDecoder For Bitmaps And Drawables
Android P Gives You An Easier Way To Decode Images To Bitmaps Or Drawables -- ImageDecoder, Which Deprecates BitmapFactory. ImageDecoder Lets You Create A Bitmap Or Drawable From A Byte Buffer, File, Or URI. It Offers Several Advantages Over BitmapFactory, Including Support For Exact Scaling, Single-step Decoding To Hardware Memory, Support For Post-processing In Decode, And Decoding Of Animated Images
HDR VP9 Video, HEIF Image Compression, And Media APIs
Android P Adds Built-in Support For HDR VP9 Profile 2, So You Can Now Deliver HDR-enabled Movies To Your Users From YouTube, Play Movies, And Other Sources On HDR-capable Devices.
Data Cost Sensitivity In JobScheduler
JobScheduler Is Android's Central Service To Help You Manage Scheduled Tasks Or Work Across Doze, App Standby, And Background Limits Changes. In Android P, JobScheduler Handles Network-related Jobs Better For The User, Coordinating With Network Status Signals Provided Separately By Carriers.
Jobs Can Now Declare Their Estimated Data Size, Signal Prefetching, And Specify Detailed Network Requirements—carriers Can Report Networks As Being Congested Or Unmetered. JobScheduler Then Manages Work According To The Network Status. For Example, When A Network Is Congested, JobScheduler Might Defer Large Network Requests. When Unmetered, It Can Run Prefetch Jobs To Improve The User Experience, Such As By Prefetching Headlines.
Neural Networks API 1.1
We Introduced The Neural Networks API In Android 8.1 To Accelerate On-device Machine Learning On Android. In Android P We're Expanding And Improving This API, Adding Support For Nine New Ops -- Pad, BatchToSpaceND, SpaceToBatchND, Transpose, Strided Slice, Mean, Div, Sub, And Squeeze. If You Have A Pixel 2 Device, The DP1 Build Now Includes An Qualcomm Hexagon HVX Driver With Acceleration For Quantized Models.
Autofill Improvements
In Android P, New APIs That Allow Password Managers To Improve The Autofill User Experience, Such As Better Dataset Filtering, Input Sanitization, And Compatibility Mode. Compatibility Mode In Particular Has A High Impact On End Users Because It Lets Password Managers Take The Accessibility-based Approach In Apps That Don't Yet Have Full Autofill Support, But Without Impacts On Performance Or Security. See All The Details On What's New Here.
Open Mobile API For NFC Payments And Secure Transactions
Android P Adds An Implementation Of The GlobalPlatform Open Mobile API To Android. On Supported Devices, Apps Can Use The OMAPI API To Access Secure Elements (SE) To Enable Smart-card Payments And Other Secure Services. A Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) Provides The Underlying API For Enumerating A Variety Of Secure Elements (eSE, UICC, And Others) Available.
Security For Apps
In Android P More Consistent UI For Fingerprint Authentication Across Apps And Devices. Android Now Provides A Standard System Dialog To Prompt The User To Touch The Fingerprint Sensor, Managing Text And Placement As Appropriate For The Device. Apps Can Trigger The System Fingerprint Dialog Using A New FingerprintDialog API.
As Part Of A Larger Effort To Move All Network Traffic Away From Cleartext (unencrypted HTTP) To TLS, We're Also Changing The Defaults For Network Security Configuration To Block All Cleartext Traffic. If You Are Using A Network Security Configuration, You'll Now Need To Make Connections Over TLS, Unless You Explicitly Opt-in To Cleartext For Specific Domains.
Privacy For Users
To Better Ensure Privacy, Android P Restricts Access To Mic, Camera, And All SensorManager Sensors From Apps That Are Idle. While Your App's UID Is Idle, The Mic Reports Empty Audio And Sensors Stop Reporting Events. Cameras Used By Your App Are Disconnected And Will Generate An Error If The App Tries To Use Them. In Most Cases, These Restrictions Should Not Introduce New Issues For Existing Apps, But We Recommend Removing These Requests From Your Apps.
The Next Developer Preview Will Arrive In May, And That Will Be A Beta Release.
The Final Update Will Be Made Available In The 3rd Quarter Of 2018.
This Build Is Not Released To The Android Beta Program, So You'll Need To Flash It Manually. It's Also Only Available For Pixel And Pixel 2 Phones, And It Will Not Be Supported By The Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, And Pixel C.
What's New? 🚀
Improved Messaging Notifications
In Android P We've Put A Priority On Improving Visibility And Function In Notifications. Try The New MessagingStyle Notification Style -- It Highlights Who Is Messaging And How You Can Reply. You Can Show Conversations, Attach Photos And Stickers, And Even Suggest Smart Replies.
Multi-camera API
You Can Now Access Streams Simultaneously From Two Or More Physical Cameras On Devices Running Android P. On Devices With Either Dual-front Or Dual-back Cameras, You Can Create Innovative Features Not Possible With Just A Single Camera, Such As Seamless Zoom, Bokeh, And Stereo Vision. The API Also Lets You Call A Logical Or Fused Camera Stream That Automatically Switches Between Two Or More Cameras.
Other Improvements In Camera Include New Session Parameters That Help To Reduce Delays During Initial Capture, And Surface Sharing That Lets Camera Clients Handle Various Use-cases Without The Need To Stop And Start Camera Streaming. We've Also Added APIs For Display-based Flash Support And Access To OIS Timestamps For App-level Image Stabilization And Special Effects.
ImageDecoder For Bitmaps And Drawables
Android P Gives You An Easier Way To Decode Images To Bitmaps Or Drawables -- ImageDecoder, Which Deprecates BitmapFactory. ImageDecoder Lets You Create A Bitmap Or Drawable From A Byte Buffer, File, Or URI. It Offers Several Advantages Over BitmapFactory, Including Support For Exact Scaling, Single-step Decoding To Hardware Memory, Support For Post-processing In Decode, And Decoding Of Animated Images
HDR VP9 Video, HEIF Image Compression, And Media APIs
Android P Adds Built-in Support For HDR VP9 Profile 2, So You Can Now Deliver HDR-enabled Movies To Your Users From YouTube, Play Movies, And Other Sources On HDR-capable Devices.
Data Cost Sensitivity In JobScheduler
JobScheduler Is Android's Central Service To Help You Manage Scheduled Tasks Or Work Across Doze, App Standby, And Background Limits Changes. In Android P, JobScheduler Handles Network-related Jobs Better For The User, Coordinating With Network Status Signals Provided Separately By Carriers.
Jobs Can Now Declare Their Estimated Data Size, Signal Prefetching, And Specify Detailed Network Requirements—carriers Can Report Networks As Being Congested Or Unmetered. JobScheduler Then Manages Work According To The Network Status. For Example, When A Network Is Congested, JobScheduler Might Defer Large Network Requests. When Unmetered, It Can Run Prefetch Jobs To Improve The User Experience, Such As By Prefetching Headlines.
Neural Networks API 1.1
We Introduced The Neural Networks API In Android 8.1 To Accelerate On-device Machine Learning On Android. In Android P We're Expanding And Improving This API, Adding Support For Nine New Ops -- Pad, BatchToSpaceND, SpaceToBatchND, Transpose, Strided Slice, Mean, Div, Sub, And Squeeze. If You Have A Pixel 2 Device, The DP1 Build Now Includes An Qualcomm Hexagon HVX Driver With Acceleration For Quantized Models.
Autofill Improvements
In Android P, New APIs That Allow Password Managers To Improve The Autofill User Experience, Such As Better Dataset Filtering, Input Sanitization, And Compatibility Mode. Compatibility Mode In Particular Has A High Impact On End Users Because It Lets Password Managers Take The Accessibility-based Approach In Apps That Don't Yet Have Full Autofill Support, But Without Impacts On Performance Or Security. See All The Details On What's New Here.
Open Mobile API For NFC Payments And Secure Transactions
Android P Adds An Implementation Of The GlobalPlatform Open Mobile API To Android. On Supported Devices, Apps Can Use The OMAPI API To Access Secure Elements (SE) To Enable Smart-card Payments And Other Secure Services. A Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) Provides The Underlying API For Enumerating A Variety Of Secure Elements (eSE, UICC, And Others) Available.
Security For Apps
In Android P More Consistent UI For Fingerprint Authentication Across Apps And Devices. Android Now Provides A Standard System Dialog To Prompt The User To Touch The Fingerprint Sensor, Managing Text And Placement As Appropriate For The Device. Apps Can Trigger The System Fingerprint Dialog Using A New FingerprintDialog API.
As Part Of A Larger Effort To Move All Network Traffic Away From Cleartext (unencrypted HTTP) To TLS, We're Also Changing The Defaults For Network Security Configuration To Block All Cleartext Traffic. If You Are Using A Network Security Configuration, You'll Now Need To Make Connections Over TLS, Unless You Explicitly Opt-in To Cleartext For Specific Domains.
Privacy For Users
To Better Ensure Privacy, Android P Restricts Access To Mic, Camera, And All SensorManager Sensors From Apps That Are Idle. While Your App's UID Is Idle, The Mic Reports Empty Audio And Sensors Stop Reporting Events. Cameras Used By Your App Are Disconnected And Will Generate An Error If The App Tries To Use Them. In Most Cases, These Restrictions Should Not Introduce New Issues For Existing Apps, But We Recommend Removing These Requests From Your Apps.
The Next Developer Preview Will Arrive In May, And That Will Be A Beta Release.
The Final Update Will Be Made Available In The 3rd Quarter Of 2018.
