Category: Android P

The fourth Developer Preview and 3rd beta of Android P has been released to those in the Android Beta Program today.  The update is a few days later than expected.  According to the timeline Google published when Android P was announced, Developer Preview 4 was slated for a late June release.

The update is just under 300 MB and is already rolling out to those who have devices registered in the Beta Program.  I currently have my Google Pixel XL in the program and the OTA update has already been received and installed.  As far as new things are concerned, you won’t find much.  There are a tweaks here and there throughout the build but no major feature changes.

A new comment in Chrome OS Gerrit suggests that some older Chromebooks will not be getting updated to the Android P framework, including the 2015 Google Chromebook Pixel.  It isn’t entirely surprising, and not entirely confirmed for that matter, that Google would begin to pear back updates for the framework.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Android Framework is more-or-less the underpinnings that allows Chrome OS to install and run Android apps.  Right now that framework is based on Android Oreo but testing has long been in progress with Android P.  But, like some phones, there comes a point where the devices themselves can’t support the new framework or it causes performance issues.  While not confirmed, that’s likely the case for some older Chromebooks that can run Android apps.

A new commit in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository suggests that facial authentication is coming to Android as a system level API.  It could mean that from system point of view, Android P could well allow for facial authentication on devices, assuming of course that the hardware to do so is built into the device.

Currently, for manufactures to support facial authentication (like OnePlus for example), they have to build their own app and leverage existing APIs, mostly around the fingerprint authentication.  That works, obviously, but it isn’t as optimized as it could be and it is dependent upon OEMs to build the supporting software & hardware to make it happen.  This commit would more-or-less standardize things for Android.

With the release of Developer Preview 2 for Android P yesterday, there was also a new wallpaper amongst all the new features of the build.  The thing is, if you upgraded your phone to DP2 from the Android Beta Program, you didn’t get the new wallpaper… until now.

Thanks to Semih Celik, it is now available for everyone.  Semih posted it on his G+ page yesterday and I have no added it to the wallpaper page here on the site as well as to this post after the break.

Today in Mountain View, California, the home of Google, the tech giant will be kicking off their annual developers conference.  Google I/O is one of the more important events and is the second developer conference going on this week behind Microsoft’s Build conference.

The event kicks off this morning at 10:00 am Pacific (1:00 pm Eastern) with the keynote address from Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai.  You can watch the streaming of his keynote on the Google I/O site, https://google.com/io for free.

Ah, the fun of trying to read between the lines… or in this case, a wallpaper.  Google released a set of wallpapers yesterday on their Instagram account for Spring 2018.  That in itself is not news.  The Mountain View company has released such seasonal wallpapers for several years now.  But what grabbed everyone’s attention was this one:

Google Spring 2018 Wallpapers 6

The Android faithful know the next major version of Android is currently referred to as Android P.  And Popsicle starts with P.  Is Google giving us a bold and clear hint?