Android 12- Features That You Need To Know

 

Android 12 is here! Google releases a major software update each year to its android mobile operating system. In 2020, it released Android 11. In 2021, it’s announced Android 12 and is now available in the form of a developer preview. With this initial build, users can now install the OS on compatible devices. Google is improving and presenting a host of features in its most recent iteration of Android. Changes to media handling and notification support, improvements to privacy and haptic feedback and more polished notification UI all make the cut. Let’s see the major confirmed features of Android 12.

Features of Android 12-

1. Easy Wi-fi Sharing-

In Android 11, if you want to share your current Wi-Fi connection with anybody, you can create a QR code easily. But in Android 12, you can avoid barcode scanning and just click the “Nearby” button you can below the QR code. This will use Android’s Nearby Share feature to transmit the Wi-Fi credentials to whom you like. While scanning the QR code is quite simple, this new feature allows you to share the connection data to multiple individuals without handling your phone around for everyone to scan. That is certainly more helpful!

2. More Screenshot Markup Options–

With a Pixel device, if you capture a screenshot, you can markup that shot with paintbrush-like tools. With Android 12, you can add text, Emoji and stickers to your screenshots using the same tool. This is not a big change but, it may prevent users from needing a third-party app to do the same thing. 

3. Improved Cookie Management-

Android 12 is adding support for SameSite cookie behaviors to WebView. The SameSite feature enables developers to announce in the case a cookie must be restricted to a specific site. This inclusion must enhance the cookie management of Android 12 across various applications and OS. The top Android browsers already support this feature.

4. AVIF Image Support-

Android 12 launches AVIF image support. It is an image format that promises improved image quality over JPEG without penalty for larger file sizes. The format uses open-source video codec AV1, that was first introduced to Android 10.

5. Compatible Media Transcoding-

Though HEVC is growing in popularity, the video compression standard is not supported by all apps. Now, Google is ready to introduce a transcoding layer to Android 12 that will pet unsupported apps to take advantage of video compression. Video capture apps that don’t support HEVC can now request Android 12 to transcode that file in AVC – a more available video compression format. Google 

Google noticed that this is a stop-gap solution and urges developers  to include HEVC support for their applications. This feature’s performance is dependent on a device’s processing power. For example, a one-minute 1080p video takes nine seconds to transcode on Pixel 4, proposing that it may not be appropriate for spending gadgets. Considering all things, the element will be accessible for all Android 12 gadgets with video capture capabilities.

6. Haptic-Coupled Audio Effect-

Google is allowing developers to mate haptic feedback patterns with audio in Android 12. Duration and strength of vibrations are taken from audio cues, that adds more engaging layer to media playback or alerts. For instance, a video calling app could use custom ringtones to identify caller with haptic feedback, or you could simulate rough terrain in a racing game,” explains Google.

7. Notification Enhancement-

Notification system of Android 12 will be redesigned to enhance usability, functionality and aesthetics. Google is changing controls and drawers and  rebuilding animations and transitions. Also, it has targeted responsiveness. Android 12 will get developers to get rid of transpolines, middle-man broadcast services or receivers. Trampolines bounce users from notification to application. Google needs notification buttons to take users directly to the app itself in Android 12. Also the company is delaying some foreground service notifications’ display by till 10 seconds. This will provide short tasks a comprehensive window to complete before knocking the user.

8. Rich Content Insertion-

Google is offering users more control over rich media through the keyboard, clipboard and drag and drop. New API will allow users to insert and move media from any of these sources. Supported formats will include “plain and styled text to markup, images, videos, audio files and so on per Google. For users, it should rapidly process file sharing or styled text to other or across apps.

9. Double-Tap Gesture For Pixel Phones-

Google could be attempting to bring a double tap gesture to Pixel phones with Android 12. By giving a quick double tap to the phone’s back, can invoke Google assistant but it can be configured for other actions also, like taking a screenshot, pause/resume media playback, open notification shade and open the recent apps view. Double-tap gesture was first spotted last year as a potential android 11 feature. It was rumoured to supplant the “Active Edge” squeeze gesture, however it won’t ever materialise. Google is working to revive the feature, codenamed Columbus, for Pixel phones. 

10. Android 12 Updates Through Google Play

Android Runtime (ART) will be included to Project Mainline – Google’s Play system updates program. This will allow the updates of form push key to ART and other necessary Android 12 services through Google Play, avoiding the necessity for  system updates to change these features. Google also notes that more module updates will be pushed through Project Mainline in the near future, including its transcoding improvements.

11. Permissions Dialog-

Google launched the permission handling feature which is helpful in case you want to stay alert about how applications use your mobile’s sensors and other accesses also. Now, with Android 12, the permissions dialog box needs a shortcut for always allowing access in settings.

12. Hidden Selfie Camera On Pixel 5- 

Detected by Android Police, Google is now giving Pixel 5 users an option to hide the punch hole in Android 12. When setting is enabled in the Developer menu, the selfie camera is hidden by black bar. Status bar will also be displayed in this bar.

13. Easier Debugging And Testing Of Changes-

Simplifying the test opt-in transformations for android developers that can impact their apps, Google has made most of them toggleable. By the use of toggles, developers can forcefully enable and disable the changes separately from adb or Developer options.

You can also – How to reduce Android App size during development?

Top 11 Best Low Code Development Platforms In 2020

Low code development is one of the most interesting development approaches at businesses as it reduces the app development efforts. One must easily develop an app for his business just by drag and drop without need of any professional software developer.  It provides the Graphical User Interface for programming and hence the rapid app development is possible. Here are some tools that help in the rapid development of code. But before proceeding towards it, let us see the details of low code.

What Is Low-Code?

Low code is a visual development approach to develop an application. It allows developers to build apps for web and mobile regardless of experience with the help of drag and drop components and model driven logic through a graphic user interface. It mitigate non-technical developers from writing code and supports professional developers to carry out tedious tasks in application development. And hence developers can create, iterate and release applications in very less time as compared to traditional methods. Low-code application development allows development of all types of apps for different kinds of use cases.

Working Of Low-Code Development Platforms-

Here are some platforms that will avoid the writing of code line by line. It allows you to design a flowchart and the code will get created. And hence the code development gets faster.

Benefits of Low-code Development Tools–

There are a lot of benefits of using low code development tools and by using it many people can contribute to the app development process. Agility of organizations is improved by using these platforms. It makes the app development process more simple and easy as compared to the traditional process. Apart from easy development, low code development has two other important benefits which is high productivity and low cost development as it can develop more apps in less time. According to the research, it boosts the digital transformation at 69% and also it reduces the dependency of high technical skills to 40%. It contains the features of visual modeling, drag and drop interfaces, mobility, security and scalability.

Low-Code Platforms Features & Capabilities

• Drag-and-drop design and development
• Integration with other apps
• Visual modeling
• User management and team roles
• Built-in workflow
• Security
• Reporting and monitoring

Top 11 Low-Code Development Platforms-

1. Google App Maker-

Google App Maker is combined with G Suite Business and G Suite Enterprise.  Like other tools, it has a drag-and-drop interface for building apps. It builds apps with accelerating business workflows or scaling internal operations with G Suite’s low-code development environment. App Maker is included with G Suite Business and Enterprise editions, as well as with G Suite for Education. Google App Maker includes many functionalities like deployment logs, deployment settings, App preview, and data models. It is a web-based tool and also supports Windows and Mac OS.

Features-

• Build apps faster
• Gain insights and drive actions with connected apps
• Stay in control
• It provides templates.
• It has a drag-and-drop UI design facility.
• Declarative data modeling.
• Easy to connect with Gmail, Calendar, or sheets.

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/top-11-best-low-code-development-platforms-in-2020/

Opportunities For E-Learning App That Will Impact Post Lockdown

Many industries are affected due to this covid-19 lockdown. And also some industries change their work culture. Education industry is one of them. At this unprecedented time e-learning becomes the golden opportunity for learners. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. The E-learning sector will boom up with the new trends and challenges. The elearning apps provide e-classroom learning for more engaging and fun-filled purposes for students. If you’re still couldn’t believe, here are some stats that remove any doubt in the mind of how big e-learning is:

• 42% companies use some form of educational technology to train their employees during formal hours, and this number is only going to increase.
• Companies that use e-learning tools for their training generate 26% more revenue per employee as compared to those who don’t.
• Nearly 7 million students take at least one online course, and by 2021, approximately half of all college classes are estimated to be e-learning based.

Technological Development Opportunities In E-Learning Sector-

1. Cloud-Based Learning- 

Single time downloads and installation of course material will stop being the norm, and the complete shift to cloud based learning is inevitable. Cloud based learning offers convenient, cost effective and customized content. It also allows collaboration for companies to pool their resources, share learning strategies and grow central knowledge bases. As this already exists now, the greater development in cloud based technologies means it will make seamless and efficient collaboration. Students or employees can access individual/complete e-learning modules that can be purchased and downloaded on demand creating tailor-made solutions for students and businesses.

2. xAPI- 

xAPI means Experience API is one of the hot topics in the e-learning world today. It allows the collection of data about the learning experiences of an individual. xAPI will give us solid quantifiable answers to the same and track progress of each individual. It records each employees’ activity that includes e-learning, m-learning, games, online reading, social media etc. and send this information to record store which can be accessed to generate meaningful data.

3. Social Media For E-Learning- 

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/opportunities-for-e-learning-app-that-will-impact-post-lockdown/

Tips and tricks to boost mobile app ranking in Google Play Store

One of the most important tasks for the application developers today is to optimize the mobile application ranking in the application store. This becomes more trickier for Android App Developer, because the number of mobile applications on Google Play Store are increasing at a high rate. Near about 2.47 million apps are available to download.

When the customer engagement is essential to keep your application on the top, you need an intense technique to deal with your competitors. However, the users can uninstall your application immediately if it will not meet the user’s expectations. And this would be a significant difficulty to boost your application ranking. Hence look forward to improve your mobile application ranking in the Google Play Store.

How Does Google Play Store Rank the Apps?

You must have heard about website positioning on the different search engines; similarly, the applications are positioned in the Google Play Store. The Google Play Store makes use of various algorithms and some determining factors to rank the application. These may include the total downloads by users, the application ratings and reviews, the application retention time on the Smartphones, how rapidly is it getting uninstalled after the download and whether or not it is associated with social media links.

Tips and tricks to Boost Mobile App Ranking in Google Play Store-

Tips and tricks to boost mobile app ranking in play store

1. App store optimization-

Read more at- http://b.link/ranking47-src_blogger

How to reduce Android App size during development?

The rising desires of users motivates developers to incorporate more things in application. Similarly it results into an increased application size. The large size applications frequently transform into storage hoggers in our smartphones causing them to operate slow or hang in the middle of a significant work. As per Google, if the size of an application is more than 150MB, in chances of installation decrease by 30%. The install conversion rate can drop by 1% if size increases by 6 MB. 

Many technology specialists out there work on creating small applications or tools which can reduce the size of an application. Android App Bundle is a publishing tool through which users don’t have to re-download things that are already there in other applications over play Store. This platform is said to decrease the size of an application by 35%. Let us explore other ways to reduce android app size during app development lifecycle.

Also know- 9 Effective Tips To Reduce Mobile App Development Cost.

How to reduce android app size?

How to reduce android app size?

1. Image optimization- 

You can conveniently reduce image size without reducing the resolution. For example, .jpg and .png pictures can be changed over to .webp web picture format to downsize applications without compromising the quality. The .webp format offers lossy compression like .jpg and transparency like .png. There are many tools available for such conversion. Tools like guetzli and packjpg suit .jpg file compression best while pngcrush and zopflipng befit .png files. Designers can implement vector graphics to make simple resolution-independent images that don’t crib for space. These are available in Android as VectorDrawable objects and allow a 100-byte file to generate images sharp and screen-sized.

android {
     defaultConfig {
         vectorDrawables.useSupportLibrary true
     }
 }

It is already known that a few images can do without static resources. The framework is enough to draw such images dynamically at runtime. Utilizing Vector Drawables objects is a brilliant idea when small size applications are to be developed. They can survive on minimal space within the APK file and create pictures compliant with the rules of material design. However, there could be a tussle with regards to CPU and RAM usage as complex objects will in general slow them down.

Also, using the Draw 9-patch tool can saves space. This is a WYSIWYG image editor and probably the coolest approaches to cut image size. The tool lets you make bitmap images that can auto-resize to fit the different screen sizes of various mobile devices. Select parts within the image can be scaled vertically or horizontally depending on the indicators drawn in it.

Another way is to use the aapt tool to crunch .png images, the resources of these are available in res/drawable/. The compression is lossless. For example, a true-color .png image  which needn’t bother with more than 256 colors can be changed over to a color palette enabled 8-bit one. The latter retains the quality yet sheds the size.

Developers must remember that the aapt tool would not compress .png files in the asset/folder. Additionally, it won’t have the option to optimize any image that uses more than 256 colors. Additionally, it may puff up .png files which have just been shrunk. This disadvantage can be avoided by using the cruncherEnabled flag in Gradle as such:

aaptOptions {
    cruncherEnabled = false
}

Read more at-

http://b.link/size12-src_blogger