Android 5.0 Lollipop – New & More Sweeter Taste for Developers

Android Lollipop Version 5.0

Google announced new Android Lollipop Version 5.0 which is a big leap from its previous version. Android 5.0 introduced many new APIs for the developer to make some really cool applications which is going to support all kind of screens near by you.If we take a deep drive in API detail, Total 14 new packages added and 57 packages got changed with removal of 1 package.

The major changes which should be taken care by the developers are regarding totally new UI called “Material Design”, ”ART runtime”, “Notifications” & “Battery Optimization”. Let’s go through all the main changes one by one.

Material Design: Material design is totally a new way to interact with the application for user. The main principle behind material design is user should be notified for every interaction he makes with application. Shadow, Ripple animation on Touch, Transition animations, Recyclerview, Floating Buttons are some of the terms to achieve mind blowing UI.

Notifications: Before Lollipop, user have to unlock the screen to see the notification. From now, user can see prioritized notification from lock screen. To achieve this developer have new updated API for Notification, from which developers can allow user to group the notification or to make it secret/secured. New Heads-up notification feature is added in which you current task will not be get interrupted by Call. Media style notification is also get introduced in the update API for Notification.

Improved Media API: In media API new 4 packages are introduced for special features which are to browse special media content, to record the screen or audio from the device microphone, to communication with TV. New API allow to play audio with PCM streaming.

PDF rendering: The most and useful API to use PDF files is introduce. Now to develop an application to read/render PDF files get easy.

Camera: Android Lollipop Version 5.0 introduced new package named “camera2” and the old one camera is deprecated. The new camera API include interface to the camera devices which are connected the android device. The new API contains all the features which require to cover all the aspects of camera.

Bluetooth Low Energy(BLE): In the last version BLE was introduced, but from now with the updated API, Android device can also work as a Low energy peripheral device like a beacon which is a great enhancement. Android 5.0 also introduced “Trustest Bluetooth Device” for smart lock in which if any Bluetooth peripheral device is near to your phone there is a no need to enter pin/password to unlock the device. Android Device will automatically detect the safe context.

ART Runtime & Battery Optimization: From now ART(Android Run time) will be the default run time environment which has some improved features like, Ahead of Time (AOT) compilation, improved garbage collector for proper memory utilization and more debugging support. With that Lollipop come with “Job Scheduling” from which developer can submit the job to execute on particular condition like when device is connected on charging or with wifi connection like this. Which is useful for battery optimization thus it will add more time to use the device than charging it.

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The packages which are newly added are:

1. android.app.job
2. android.app.usage
3. android.bluetooth.le
4. android.hardware.camera2
5. android.hardware.camera2.params
6. android.media.browse
7. android.media.projection
8. android.media.session
9. android.media.tv
10. android.service.media
11. android.service.restrictions
12. android.service.voice
13. android.system
14. android.telecom