5 Takeaways from Google I/O ’19 Every Android Developer Will Love

The long-awaited Google I/O 2019 closed on May 9 after three days packed with news, demos, updates and announcements. This annual conference is a summary of what the huge Google team has been working in the past year and what it has in store for the rest of the world.

As usual, Google I/O was full of innovations with something for everyone. AI, augmented reality, new hardware, next-gen Assistant — you can find all that and much more. Since the entire account of Google I/O 2019 can take dozens of pages, in this post we’ve decided to pick only the main takeaways that are going to concern Android developers.

Android Q beta

The new Android version that is going to be officially released in August 2019 became a true headliner of the conference, as its updates may affect lots of Android apps on the market. The new version comes with a whole lot of new features:

• Dark theme. This feature inverts the screen color mode setting a dark background to the app. The benefits are not purely aesthetic — the dark theme, first of all, is much lower on the battery consumption. Besides, with a dark theme your screen will not blind you during the night and can be much better accessible for some categories of vision-impaired users.

The dark theme, when enabled, applies to all apps in the device, thus Android developers will need to adapt their apps to support the dark theme. Well, August is still three months away, so there is time.

• Gesture navigation. Android Q now has an option of navigating by gestures only. Of course, the traditional 2-button and 3-button options are there, too, but you can opt to forget the buttons and just pinch and swipe.
• Smart replies. In Android Q, any messenger app that is installed in the device will have the smart replies option.
• Gentle and interruptive notifications. User can now decide which push notifications they want to receive and which should lurk in the background. Android Q has much wider possibilities for the user to choose what should distract them and what shouldn’t.

Android Q is now available on 21 smartphones including Sony Xperia XZ3, several Vivo models, Nokia 8.1 and, of course, a whole line of Google Pixel devices.

Android Studio 3.5

At Google I/O 2019, the Google team announced the release of Android Studio 3.5 beta, the long-awaited IDE for Android developers. In his version, the team focused mainly on speed and performance.

The new version comes with more effective memory management, CPU optimization, and the Apply Changes tool replacing the Instant Run that was used in the previous versions. Apply Changes can quickly deploy code changes on the device, also without losing state.

Kotlin-first approach

Exactly two years ago, at Google I/O 2017, Kotlin was announced as a supported language for Android. Now, it has grown to become the officially preferred language. Google is encouraging Android developers embarking on a new project to consider using Kotlin from the very beginning.

Naturally, all new API versions and features will be also in Kotlin, so the recommendation to start your Android projects in Kotlin seems rather logical. One language across the components — less integration effort.

To promote its Kotlin-first approach, Google launches its Kotlin/Everywhere initiative with a series of informational and educational events. According to the organizers, Kotlin/Everywhere is a global-scale project targeted at all groups of developers.

Jetpack Compose

Jetpack Compose is another thing Android developers have been waiting for. When Google released its Jetpack toolset to simplify Android app development last year, it was met with enthusiasm, and today more than 800 of the 1000 top Google apps use Jetpack.

Jetpack Compose is a UI building toolkit that speeds up app development. It uses Kotlin with all the advantages of this programming language. The speed of development that you can achieve with Jetpack Compose is largely due to the abundance of libraries containing various styles, widgets, animations and other elements. Using Jetpack Compose, you will need to create much less boilerplate code which greatly reduces the time needed to build the app.

Google Pixel 3a and Google Pixel 3a XL

To wrap up our brief account of what Google I/O 2019 has for Android developers, let’s also mention the hardware. At the conference, the Google team also presented its latest smartphone, Google Pixel 3a and Google Pixel 3a XL (the difference is the display size, 5.6” against 6.0”).

Pixel 3a smartphones use Android P with all the features of this platform. The main advantage of these device models is that they support many options of popular flagship smartphones at half price. Pixel 3a is available at $399, and Pixel 3A XL — at $479.

Otherwise, the Pixel 3a line boasts the same image and sound quality as most of the popular brands, and its camera is absolutely stunning. Night mode, depth control, zoom — you have it all in Pixel 3a.

In addition, the new smartphones support Google Maps AR. Just open the app, point your camera forward — and follow the arrows appearing right over the street view on your screen.

To be continued

Hope you enjoyed our account of the main innovations in the Android development area that were announced at Google I/O 2019. Shortly, we are going to post the conference takeaways for other areas. Subscribe to our blog and follow us on medium not to miss the latest news!