Google's Annual I/O Developers Conference is on it's roll, and here we have the next version Android mobile operating system, unveiled by the Mountain View company, at the event. Google's Senior Vice President of Android, Chrome and Apps, Sundar Pichai and his team has officially announced next release of Android L in a Developer Preview, yesterday, as reported by BloombergBusinessweek, the day before.
The new Android L version will come with lots of new improvements in the User Interface, performance updates and other brand new features. In this regard the company has also announced the fresh 'Material Design' aspect along with Android L, which is said to utilize the tactile surfaces on screen with new redesigned bold graphics and smooth motion, that will make beautiful and intuitive experiences, while using Android from so on. Also in the new Material Design, the surface and shadow on screen will play an important role in making things more complex and physical in motion.
Google wants to bring the same user experience on all screen sizes, evenly, including, the smartwatch on your wrist to the largest TV at home. The American will use their design for their Android Wear powered smartwatches, as well as on the newly unveiled Android TV and for Android Auto. The main part will be, adding the new Material Design theme to the L-series of Android, of what we are taking about at the moment. The updated add-on will feature new system widgets, revamped screen transitions and animations with improved touch feedback, by pushing new style for the applications.
Along with new Material Design, Google will also bring number of other UI changes to the system applications like Gmail and other Google applications, there comes the new refreshed navigation buttons, and status bar, redesigned phone dialer, keyboard, do-not-disturb mode and more. Android L will also pack modifications for the lockscreen, bringing enhanced notifications, where from now, users can read, open or just swipe-away the notifications to dismiss them at anytime from the lockscreen itself. There is also 'Heads-Up Notifications' which will let you look through an alert, even when you are involved in a different application, like for instance, while gaming or when watching a video.
'Personal Unlocking' is another new feature coming with the updated lockscreen, that will use your phone's Bluetooth connection for unlocking the smartphone or tablet. If you have an Android Wear powered smartwatch anywhere near to your device, you can unlock the handset pretty easily without any authentication process.
Google has kept their step to the fitness, announcing the new Google Fit. An application that will record and store all your health data like, the steps you take, distance covered, calories burned, sleep time and more from the sensors on the phone and other connected wearables like smartwatches. Google has showed us some of their partners that will make wearables supporting the application, later this year, which includes, Intel, LG, Motorola, HTC, Nike, Adidas, RunKeeper, Polar, etc.
In term of performance upgrades, ART or Android Runtime has been made the default runtime, that supports ARM, x86, and MIPS for Android's new L-series, replacing Dalvik from the current running KitKat version, making the smartphones run more faster and responsively. Google has also introduced the 64-bit architecture, which can take advantage of more than 5,000 newly introduced API's for the OS. The GUI rendering on the platform have been tweaked at 60 frames-per-second, making the unit's all over scrolling feel reckless.
Google has also revealed the new Project Volta, which will optimize the phone's battery life and enable 'Battery Saver' mode, that will be put into action automatically when needed. The new feature can also tune in the CPU, accordingly and can even turn off the device's radio signals to save more battery life. It is said that, this will save you 90 minutes of extra usage time on the LG Google Nexus 5 smartphone.
Lastly, the company has announced that they will have factory images of developers preview for LG Nexus 5 and ASUS Nexus 7, available from today for developers. Google will be announcing the new Android L-release for the public, later in fall via an over-the-air update to supported devices.
