Productivity Tips for Mobile Application Development Productivity in Android 13
Android 13 enables the Android mobile app development team to build robust apps for different screen sizes, network technologies, CPU/GPU chipsets, and hardware architectures, making the Android platform work for everyone. We have compiled 15 things you should know about Android 13 if you want to develop android mobile applications. It is the upcoming major release of the Android mobile operating system, developed by the OHA (Open Handset Alliance) led by Google. It is codenamed Android 13 “Tiramisu,” and Google is set to release the stable version in September 2022.
Developer Productivity features for Mobile App Development in Andriod 13
DevOps teams across many industries use developer productivity as a key performance indicator. Learn how to assess and improve developer productivity.
Nowadays, everything is measured — and it’s no different for software engineers. Productivity metrics such as lines of code, commits, pull requests, and code reviews are now used to evaluate team members. The emphasis is shifting toward eliminating all potential distractions and interruptions and making the most of a developer’s time. In this article, we’ll discuss what developer productivity features help developers, how to improve productivity, and how Payoda measures the productivity of our software development teams. Let’s get started!
New user interface for copy-paste tasks.
A new UI will show whenever the user adds a piece of content to the clipboard. This UI previews the content to the user and provides visual confirmation after successful coping. This new UI also has multiple buttons to share the content directly and share the same copied content across connected devices like PC, tablets, screens, and more.
A predictive back gesture
With the predictive back gesture, pressing the OS default back button in an application will display an intermediate window. The window will show a pop-up of the currently running app in the background and on the home screen. This feature will allow users to stay on the current app view or press the back button to exit the app. Also, users can enable this feature to be turned on or off. The predictive back gesture also allows individual apps to customize their design when performing back navigation.
Customized theme app icons
In Android 13, users can see the theme-based app icons. Through this feature, applications will have the capability to display their icons in three different ways. Apart from the standard icons, applications running on Android 13 will have adaptive icons and monochromatic icons. Application developers must support these themed icon features while developing. And these themed icons will match the color palette a user selects. When the user toggles the theme launcher, these icons are adapted to the theme’s colors or the wallpaper’s shades.
Quick settings tile placement API
Quick settings have been a suitable method to access simple toggle-based operations or functionality, and these settings are always within the notification bar. Apps must have developed a separate custom tile service that can use a new tile placement API from Android 13. To enable a quick title in the notifications bar, the app can show a dialog to the users; with a single button click from the dialog requested title is added without leaving your application.
Improved support for multilingual users
From Android 13, users can change their language preferences based on individual applications. Users can change the language of their mobile applications through custom in-app language selection or system settings. Android 13 will also improvise the line heights for non-Latin scripts such as Tamil, Hindi, and other languages while also adding significant updates to the Unicode library. The Chinese and Japanese text conversion API is enhanced to fewer steps for completing tasks.
Rendering support for color vector font
Android 13 update comes with COLOR version 1 font for rendering support. The COLRv1 font format renders very fast without compromising the quality, resolution, or sharpness while also adding system emojis to the COLRv1 format.
Bluetooth Low Energy audio
The Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) audio allows users to receive high-quality audio without compromising battery life. Android 13 adds in-built support for LE audio to compatible devices. Bluetooth LE audio is a significant update from the Bluetooth classic, with multiple use cases for sharing, accessibility, broadcasting, and more.
MIDI 2.0 support
Android 13 also adds support for MIDI 2.0 hardware. Users will be able to connect MIDI hardware through the USB port. Enhanced resolution for MIDI controllers and per-note controllers are new features that will accompany Android 13.
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Privacy and Security updates in Android 13
Implementing security measures to secure the mobile application from cyber-attacks is critical. At Payoda, we develop your mobile app with a proper security framework to help avoid future cybercriminal threats, thereby gaining user confidence. However, when it comes to business, it all comes down to the users’ trust and confidence, which can be achieved by deploying a high-featured app with a solid security framework.
Context-registered runtime receivers for secure exports
From Android 13, Sending unprotected broadcasts to dynamically-registered receivers of other apps will be prevented. This feature improves safety by reducing app vulnerabilities and offers developers better control over the background data sent and received by apps. Additionally, this data exchanged between apps is further secured to prevent harmful applications from extracting highly-sensitive data.
The context-registered runtime receivers can share broadcasted data only across secure data channels. This secure data cannot be extracted by other applications, users, and hackers unless explicitly defined within the runtime code.
Photo Picker for apps and their images
The Photo Picker will provide a standardized UI for individual apps from Android 13. For example, instead of allowing access to the entire media library, users can define which applications get access to which photos or videos.
Revoke developer permissions
Users can revoke previously-granted permissions at any time for applications in Android 13. This API allows users to revoke unused permissions and allow best privacy practices permissions for the applications.
New runtime permission for nearby Wi-Fi devices
Android 13 adds the NEARBY_DEVICES runtime permissions for applications managing Wi-Fi access points surrounding the device. These apps must declare the NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permission while running the Wi-Fi APIs. Additionally, the application doesn’t need ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission while using Wi-Fi APIs from Android 13.
Other updates of Android 13
Programmable graphics
Android 13 supports AGSL (Android Graphics Shading Language) to control programmable shaders. AGSL creates ripple effects, blur, animated shaders, stretch overscroll, and other visual effects for android applications. In addition, the RuntimeShader allows developers to customize painting in Canvas using the Android rendering engine.
Preferential audio routing
Applications can use these new APIs to identify how their audio will be routed based on the user’s control over which devices can play audio.
OpenJDK 11
Android 13 includes a number of Open Java Development Kit 11 updates and added core functionalities within its code.
Payoda as your Mobile Application Development Partner
The experience of users and app developers is constantly changing due to the continual evolution of mobile operating systems. And based on early reports, the Android 13 update has already surpassed expectations by introducing some fantastic enhancements to APIs, the user interface, permissions, privacy features, and accessibility. Furthermore, in an effort to give end users a better experience, Android 13 offers several significant improvements that should be explored from the Android mobile app development perspective.
To learn more about how we continue to deliver on advanced mobile application development, talk to our experts at Payoda.
Authored by: Vimalathithan
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