[MUSIC PLAYING]
LAURENCE MORONEY: Today I'm having
coffee with Ian Lake from the Android team
to talk about what's new in Android N for users
and developers.
So, Ian, Android N, I know you're
working on this, lots of new stuff, lots of exciting stuff.
Can you tell me all about it?
IAN LAKE: Yeah, actually lot of good
features both for developers and users in this release.
But I have to say my personal favorite has
to be multi-window.
So here you'll be able to run two apps kind of side-by-side.
So you can imagine this being great for phones, where you're
trying to read a review while chatting
with someone about where you want to go for dinner,
or on a tablet, where you're watching a video
and wanting to get through your emails at the same time.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah, I watch a lot of videos on my tablet.
But then I need like another device.
IAN LAKE: Right, you have a phone and tablet
at the same time, and it's just much better
to have it all on one device.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And the guy beside me on the plane
gets really annoyed.
IAN LAKE: I'm sure he'll be much happier now.
LAURENCE MORONEY: You and Joanna put together
this DevByte talking about some of the new developer features.
IAN LAKE: Yeah, a whole whirlwind tour
of kind of all what's new in Android N.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK, should we take a look at the video?
IAN LAKE: Yeah.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Welcome to What's New in N-- not the real name.
-But we can talk about all of the new features added
in this version of Android.
For example, Marshmallow brought you Doze an App Standby.
And now N is bring you Doze again.
But it's so much more.
[END PLAYBACK]
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, at the end of that video,
you spoke a little bit about Doze
and how do those works in Android N.
Could you brief me a little bit on that?
IAN LAKE: Yeah, so it's a lot of the expansion of what
we did in Marshmallow to kind of save user's battery
life by kind of batching things together.
And N takes it to the next level.
Rather than trying to focus on just be totally stationary case
on the table, now it's whenever the screen is off,
after a certain time, we'll be saving battery
by chunking as much as we can together.
So hopefully it will be a huge win for users, and actually
without any more work from developers.
The same things used for Marshmallow, like high priority
GCM messages and stuff, will actually still apply in N.
Should be an easy transition.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So if I'm just building things the way
that I had done for M, I'm getting advantage
of all that nice new stuff.
IAN LAKE: Good to go.
Yeah, it'll be great.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, there's got
to be a lot of new developer APIs in there.
IAN LAKE: Yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: We spoke earlier a little bit
about the multi-screen.
How does that work from a developer perspective?
IAN LAKE: Yeah, a lot of it, again,
should be, if you've been doing it right all along,
it should just work.
A lot of the things that we've built into the resource
system on Android right from the beginning actually
still work on Android M. So if you're
supporting phones and tablets right now, then,
as your window gets resized, then your app will just
continue to use kind of those layouts you already have.
We actually put out a blog just the other day about
preparing for multi-window, which has a lot of the things
you can already do right now, before even needing Android N
APIs to really kind of take it to the next level.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So we've spoken about windowing,
and we've spoken about Doze and some of the great things
that are available for developers in that.
But I see there's lots of great new notification
stuff in Android N. Can you tell me about it?
IAN LAKE: Yeah, we did both, a whole kind of visual refresh,
try to make it a little bit easier to figure out
who actually are sending those notifications.
But I think some of the coolest new features
are kind of a direct reply, where you actually, instead
of having to go app and hit the button and type your reply in,
now directly in the notification you can reply.
If it has a reply button, then you'll
be able to type your reply, hit send without actually
having to go into the app.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
IAN LAKE: In addition, kind of the new bundling
notifications together, so you can
imagine like you get 10 emails.
And you really only need to check two or three of them,
or maybe you want to use direct reply to reply to one of them.
Now you can actually expand that list out
and get individual notifications in there,
so you can swipe to dismiss just individual ones or direct reply
to another one.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
IAN LAKE: Should be really awesome.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I actually also like the new larger
UI that's on them.
Because a lot of times, for me, when I get notifications
and I'm really interested in notifications,
when I'm doing something else, like driving,
and with a larger UI, it's a quick glance
at my phone to see the notification,
rather than maybe squinting to see something small--
IAN LAKE: Yeah, hopefully it will
be a lot easier to figure out what apps are sending you
notifications, as well as kind of who is actually sending you
a notification, right?
That's the hugest part of notifications
is who it's actually coming from.
LAURENCE MORONEY: If I want to look
at all these other extra features
and start building for these, where do I go to get started?
IAN LAKE: Yeah, so we actually built a whole preview site
at developer.android.com/previewm
as you might expect.
And that goes through a kind of all of the API overview
as well as some of the behavior changes and how
to get everything setup.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Should be easy to remember that site.
OK, well thanks, Ian.
I'm going to get started right away.
So lots of great new features in Android N for you to enjoy
and lots of stuff if you're a developer for you to get
started.
Take a look at the URLs and the links below.
We've also got all these great videos on the Android
and Google Developers channels.
Thank you.