Tag Archives: SDK updates

Android Wear 2.0 is here with new hardware features!

Posted by Hoi Lam, Lead Developer Advocate, Android Wear


Today, we are releasing the final SDK for Android Wear 2.0. In this release, we have added support for the new hardware features announced yesterday. If you have not done so already, it really is time to publish your apps so as to not miss the consumer hardware launch tomorrow.
Throughout the developer preview program, you have given us a lot of constructive feedback as well as bug reports. Thank you again!

Android Wear 2.0 recap



Android Wear 2.0 is our biggest update since we launched Wear in 2014, with numerous platform and developer enhancements. Some of the highlights include:
  • Material Design for Android Wear - A new system user interface and design guidelines, featuring a darker colour palette, vertical layout and visual components such as the WearableRecyclerView and WearableNavigationDrawer. We have also enhanced notifications on the watch with the new MessagingStyle rich notification style and inline actions.
  • Watch Face Complications - Complications are areas of the watch face that display information other than time. Apps can supply data to supported watch faces by creating a ComplicationProviderService, and watch faces can render this data in a style that suits the watch face design.
  • Standalone Android Wear apps and iOS support - Apps can now be downloaded directly to Wear devices via an on-watch Google Play Store. In addition, these apps can access the internet directly without relying on phone apps. This means that apps can now run on Android Wear devices that are paired to iOS devices.

New hardware support

The first two watches with Android Wear 2.0 give users more ways to interact with their smartwatches. In the final SDK, we have added API support for physical button locations and rotary input. At present, developers will need the new LG Watch Style or LG Watch Sport to test these new functionalities; however, we are working to add these new hardware features to the emulator. Stay tuned for updates! The SDK also includes a few other final bug fixes, such as support for more than three items in the Wearable Action Drawer.

App review changes

Now that Android Wear 2.0 is live, we'll soon update the Android Wear App Quality review process with two important changes. First, enhancing your phone app notifications for Android Wear will no longer be sufficient for passing the review. Second, it will soon be required that you upload a watch APK that's compatible with Android Wear 2.0. Only apps that pass these criteria will receive badging in Play Store on the phone and be eligible for top charts for Android Wear apps. These changes will ensure a more consistent experience for users and allow us to streamline the review process for you.

The journey doesn't stop here!

The Android Wear 2.0 developer preview lasted longer than we originally planned, but we think that the extra time has paid off in a big way. Thank you once again for your input and patience. You helped us achieve a higher quality bar than we could have achieved on our own.

We have integrated the Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview documentation into the main Wear developer documentation site, and have also made factory images available for the preview devices. For developer related bugs, please continue to file developer bug reports or post comments in our Android Wear Developers community.

From the Android Wear team: Thank you again for your feedback and support!



Spatial audio comes to the Cardboard SDK

Originally posted on Google Developers Blog

Posted by Nathan Martz, Product Manager, Google Cardboard

Human beings experience sound in all directions—like when a fire truck zooms by, or when an airplane is overhead. Starting today, the Cardboard SDKs for Unity and Android support spatial audio, so you can create equally immersive audio experiences in your virtual reality (VR) apps. All your users need is their smartphone, a regular pair of headphones, and a Google Cardboard viewer.

Sound the way you hear it

Many apps create simple versions of spatial audio—by playing sounds from the left and right in separate speakers. But with today’s SDK updates, your app can produce sound the same way humans actually hear it. For example:

  • The SDK combines the physiology of a listener’s head with the positions of virtual sound sources to determine what users hear. For example: sounds that come from the right will reach a user’s left ear with a slight delay, and with fewer high frequency elements (which are normally dampened by the skull).
  • The SDK lets you specify the size and material of your virtual environment, both of which contribute to the quality of a given sound. So you can make a conversation in a tight spaceship sound very different than one in a large, underground (and still virtual) cave.

Optimized for today’s smartphones

We built today’s updates with performance in mind, so adding spatial audio to your app has minimal impact on the primary CPU (where your app does most of its work). We achieve these results in a couple of ways:

  • The SDK is optimized for mobile CPUs (e.g. SIMD instructions) and actually computes the audio in real-time on a separate thread, so most of the processing takes place outside of the primary CPU.
  • The SDK allows you to control the fidelity of each sound. As a result, you can allocate more processing power to critical sounds, while de-emphasizing others.

Simple, native integrations

It’s really easy to get started with the SDK’s new audio features. Unity developers will find a comprehensive set of components for creating soundscapes on Android, iOS, Windows and OS X. And native Android developers will now have a simple Java API for simulating virtual sounds and environments.


Experience spatial audio in our sample app for developers

Check out our Android sample app (for developer reference only), browse the documentation on the Cardboard developers site, and start experimenting with spatial audio today. We’re excited to see (and hear) the new experiences you’ll create!

Google Play services 8.1: Get ready for Marshmallow!

Posted by, Magnus Hyytsten, Developer Advocate

With the rollout of Google Play services 8.1 finally finished, there’s a lot of new information to share with developers about the release!

Marshmallow Permissions

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) has introduced a new permissions model allowing users to control app permissions at runtime. As an app developer, it’s important for you to adopt this and give your users good control over the permissions your app needs. You can find more details here.

If your app is using Google Play services SDK versions prior to 8.1, you must update to use this new version to ensure your app is fully compatible with Android 6.0. This will enable you to manage the permission flows appropriately for your app and avoid any potential connection issues. For more details, and a step-by-step guide to what your app should do for the best user experience, take a look at this blog post on the Android Developers site.

App Invites

App Invites allows you to grow your apps audience by letting existing Android and iOS users invite their Google contacts via email or SMS to try your app out. Google Play services 8.1 adds the ability for developers to customize the email invitation, including adding a custom image, and specifying a call-to-action button text. These improvements should help developers increase user engagement and conversions with app invites.

Ambient Mode Maps

Android Wear provides a feature called ambient mode, enabling apps to stay visible, even when they aren’t actively being used. Now, with Google Play services 8.1, the Google Maps Android API supports ambient mode. In this mode, a simplified low-color rendering of the map will be seen. This reduces power consumption by lighting fewer pixels, but the camera and zoom level are retained, so user context will be kept. To learn more about ambient mode, check out this blog post.

Nearby Status Listener

Google Nearby allows you to build simple interactions between nearby devices. A new addition in Google Play services allows your app to receive callbacks when an active Nearby publish or subscribe expires. This frees you from tracking the TTL and allows your app's UI to accurately reflect whether Nearby is active or not.

Play Games Player Stats API

The new Play Games Player Stats API allows you to build better, smarter, games. It will let you tailor user experiences to specific segments of players and different stages of the player lifecycle. For example, you can give your most valuable players that are returning from a break in play a special welcome back message and reward.

Breaking Changes

In this release, there are some changes to GoogleApiClient and PendingResult, making them abstract classes, which may lead to breaking changes in your code. Learn more about these changes and how to handle them in the release notes.



SDK Now available!

You can get started developing today by downloading the Google Play services SDK from the Android SDK Manager. To learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, visit our documentation on Google Developers.