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Android 5.0 Lollipop SDK and Nexus Preview Images

Two more weeks!

At Google I/O last June, we gave you an early version of Android 5.0 with the L Developer Preview,
running on Nexus 5, Nexus 7 and Android TV. Over the course of the L
Developer Preview program, you’ve given us great feedback and we
appreciate the engagement from you, our developer community. Thanks!



This week, we announced Android 5.0 Lollipop. Starting today, you can download the full release of the Android 5.0 SDK, along with updated developer images for Nexus 5, Nexus 7 (2013), ADT-1, and the Android emulator.



The first set of devices to run this new version of Android -- Nexus
6, Nexus 9, and Nexus Player -- will be available in early November. In
the same timeframe, we'll also roll out the Android 5.0 update worldwide
to Nexus 4, 5, 7 (2012 & 2013), and 10 devices, as well as to
Google Play edition devices.



Therefore, now is the time to test your apps on the new platform. You have two more weeks to get ready!

What’s in Lollipop?

Android 5.0 Lollipop introduces a host of new APIs and features including:

• Material Design theme & APIs
• Enhanced Notifications for your apps
• Project Volta and Battery Historian for better power efficiency for apps
• Enhanced app runtime with Android Runtime (ART)
• OpenGL ES 3.1, Android Extension Pack & 64-bit support for better game & app performance

There's much more, so check out the Android 5.0 platform highlights for a complete overview.

What’s in the Android 5.0 SDK?

The Android 5.0 SDK includes updated tools and new developer system
images for testing. You can develop against the latest Android platform
using API level 21 and take advantage of the updated support library to
implement Material Design as well as the leanback user interface for TV
apps.



You can download these components through the Android SDK Manager and develop your app in Android Studio:

• Android 5.0 SDK Platform & Tools
• Android 5.0 Emulator System Image - 32-bit & 64-bit (x86)
• Android 5.0 Emulator System Image for Android TV (32-bit)
• Android v7 appcompat Support Library for Material Design theme backwards capability
• Android v17 leanback library for Android TV app support

For developers using the Android NDK for native C/C++ Android apps we have:

• NDK r10c with API level 21 support

For developers on Android TV devices we have:

• Android 5.0 system image over the air (OTA) update for ADT-1 Developer Kit. OTA updates will appear over the next few days.

Similar to our previous release of the preview, we are also providing updated system image downloads
for Nexus 5 & Nexus 7 (2013) devices to help with your testing as
well. These images support the Android 5.0 SDK, but only have the
minimal apps pre-installed in order to enable developer testing:

• Nexus 5 (GSM/LTE) “hammerhead” Device System Image
• Nexus 7 (2013) - (Wifi) “razor” Device System Image

For the developer preview versions, there will not be an over the air (OTA) update. You will need to wipe and reflash
your developer device to use the latest developer preview versions. If
you want to receive the official consumer OTA update in November and any
other official updates, you will have to have a factory image on your Nexus device.

Validate your apps with the Android 5.0 SDK

With the consumer availability of Android 5.0 and the Nexus 6, Nexus
9, and Nexus Player right around the corner, here are a few things you
should do to prepare:

1. Get the emulator system images through the SDK Manager or download the Nexus device system images.
2. Recompile your apps against Android 5.0 SDK, especially if you used any preview APIs. Note: APIs have changed between the preview SDK and the final SDK.
3. Validate that your current Android apps run on the new API 21 level with ART enabled.
   And if you use the NDK for your C/C++ Android apps, validate against
   the 64-bit emulator. ART is enabled by default on API 21 & new
   Android devices with Android 5.0.

Once you validate your current app, explore the new APIs and features for Android 5.0.

Migrate Your Existing App to Material Design

Android 5.0 Lollipop introduces Material Design,
which enables your apps to adopt a bold, colorful, and flexible design,
while remaining true to a small set of key principles that guide user
interaction across multiple screens and devices.



After making sure your current apps work with Android 5.0, now is the time to enable the Material theme in your app with the AppCompat support library. For quick tips & recommendations for making your app shine with Material Design, check out our Material Design guidelines and tablet optimization tips. For those of you new to Material Design, check out our Getting Started guide.

Get your apps ready for Google Play!

Starting today, you can publish your apps that are targeting Android 5.0 Lollipop to Google Play. In your app manifest, update android:targetSdkVersion to "21", test your app, and upload it to the Google Play Developer Console.



Starting November 3rd, Nexus 9 will be the first device available to
consumers that will run Android 5.0. Therefore, it is a great time to
publish on Google Play, once you've updated and tested your app. Even if
your apps target earlier versions of Android, take a few moments to
test them on the Android 5.0 system images, and publish any updates
needed in advance of the Android 5.0 rollout.



Stay tuned for more details on the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 devices, and how to make sure your apps look their best on them.

Next up, Android TV!

We also announced the first consumer Android TV device, Nexus Player.
It’s a streaming media player for movies, music and videos, and also a
first-of-its-kind Android gaming device. Users can play games on their
HDTVs with a gamepad, then keep playing on their phones while they’re on
the road. The device is also Google Cast-enabled, so users can cast
your app from their phones or tablets to their TV.



If you’re developing for Android TV, watch for more information on
November 3rd about how to distribute your apps to Android TV users
through the Google Play Developer Console. You can start getting your
app ready by making sure it meets all of the TV Quality Guidelines.

Get started with Android 5.0 Lollipop platform

If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at this new version of Android yet, download the SDK and get started today. You can learn more about what’s new in the Android 5.0 platform highlights and get all the details on new APIs and changed behaviors in the API Overview. You can also check out the latest DevBytes videos to learn more about Android 5.0 features.



Enjoy this new release of Android!

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What's New in Android 5.0 Lollipop

Android 5.0 Lollipop is the biggest update of
Android to date, introducing an all new visual style, improved
performance, and much more. Android 5.0 Lollipop also extends across
screens big and small, including phones, tablets, wearables, TVs and
cars, to give your users access to information when they need it most.

To get you started on developing and testing on Android 5.0 Lollipop,
here are some of the developer highlights with links to related videos
and documentation.

User experience

• Material design for the
  multiscreen world — Material Design is a new approach for designing apps
  in today’s multi-device world that takes a comprehensive strategy to
  visual, motion, and interaction design across a number of platforms and
  form factors. Android 5.0 brings Material Design to the platform, with a
  full set of tools for implementing material design
  in your apps. The system is incredibly flexible, allowing your app to
  express its individual character and brand with bold colors and a
  variety of responsive UI patterns and themeable elements.
• Enhanced notifications
  — New lockscreen notifications let you surface content, updates, and
  actions to users at a glance, without needing to unlock their device.
  Heads-up notifications let you display content and actions in a small
  floating window managed by the system, no matter which app is in the
  foreground. Notifications are refreshed for Material Design and you can
  use accent colors to express your brand.
• Concurrent documents in Overview
  — Now you can organize your app by tasks and present these concurrently
  as individual “documents” on the Overview screen. For example, instant
  messaging apps could declare each chat as a separate document. Users can
  flip through these on the Overview screen to find the specific chat
  they want and jump straight to it.

Performance

• Android Runtime (ART)
  — Android 5.0 runs exclusively on the ART runtime. ART offers
  ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation, more efficient garbage collection, and
  improved development and debugging features. In many cases it improves
  performance of the device, without you having to change your code.
• 64-bit support — Support for 64-bit ABIs provides additional
  address space and improved performance with certain compute workloads.
  Apps written in the Java language can run immediately on 64-bit
  architectures with no modifications required. NDK r10c includes 64-bit support, for apps and games using native code.
• Project Volta
  — New tools and APIs help you build battery-efficient apps. Battery
  Historian, a tool included in the SDK, lets you visualize power events
  over time and understand how your app is using battery. The JobScheduler
  API lets you set the conditions under which your background tasks and
  other jobs should run, such as when the device is idle or connected to
  an unmetered network or to a charger, to minimize battery impact. More
  in this I/O video.
• OpenGL ES 3.1 and Android Extension Pack
  — With OpenGL ES 3.1, you get compute shaders, stencil textures, and
  texture gather for your games. Android Extension Pack (AEP) is a new set
  of extensions to OpenGL ES that bring desktop-class graphics to Android
  including tessellation and geometry shaders, and use ASTC texture
  compression across GPU technologies. More on what's new for game
  developers in this DevBytes video.
• WebView updates — We’ve updated WebView to support WebRTC,
  WebAudio and WebGL will be supported. WebView also includes native
  support for all of the Web Components specifications: Custom Elements,
  Shadow DOM, HTML Imports, and Templates. WebView is now unbundled from
  the system and will be regularly updated through Google Play.

Workplace

• Managed provisioning and unified view of apps
  — to make it easier for employees to have a single device for personal
  and work use, framework enhancements offer a unified view of apps,
  notifications & recents across work apps and personal apps. Profile
  owner APIs, in the workplace context, let administrators create and
  manage work profiles and defined as part of a new managed provisioning
  process. More in this I/O video.

Media

• Advanced camera capabilities
  — A new camera API gives you new capabilities for advanced image
  capture and processing. On supported devices, your app can capture
  uncompressed YUV capture at full 8 megapixel resolution at 30 FPS. You
  can also capture raw sensor data and control parameters such as exposure
  time, ISO sensitivity, and frame duration, on a per-frame basis.
• Audio improvements
  — The sound architecture has been enhanced, with lower input latency in
  OpenSL, the addition of multichannel-mixing, and USB digital audio mode
  support. More in this I/O video.

Connectivity

• BLE Peripheral Mode
  — Android devices can now function in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
  peripheral mode. Apps can use this capability to broadcast their
  presence to nearby devices — for example, you can now build apps that
  let a device function as a beacon and transmit data to another BLE
  device. More in this I/O video.
• Multi-networking
  — Apps can dynamically request networks based on capabilities such as
  metered or unmetered. This is useful when you want to use a specific
  network, such as cellular. Apps can also request platform to re-evaluate
  networks for an internet connection. This is useful when your app sees
  unusually high latency on a particular network, it can enable the
  platform to switch to a better network (if available) sooner with a
  graceful handoff.

Get started!

You can get started developing and testing on Android 5.0
right away by downloading the Android 5.0 Platform (API level 21), as
well as the SDK Tools, Platform Tools, and Support Package from the Android SDK Manager.

Check out the DevByte video below for more of what’s new in Lollipop!

Read More