14 DAY TRIAL // A lot sooner than expected, Google released today the first Developer Preview (DP) milestone of the upcoming Android 9 mobile operating system for application developers who want to prepare their apps for the next major Android version.
Android P Developer Preview is now available for early adopters and application developers who want to have an early look at the next Android release, bringing various simplicity, speed, and a bunch of new features to extend your apps. Among these, we can mention display cutout support a.k.a. "notch" support.
"Android P offers support for the latest edge-to-edge screens with display cutout for camera and speaker," said Google. "The new DisplayCutout class lets you find out the location and shape of the non-functional areas where content shouldn't be displayed. To determine the existence and placement of these cutout areas, use the getDisplayCutout() method."
Furthermore, Google implemented platform support for the IEEE 802.11mc Wi-Fi protocol for indoor tracking, notification updates, an enhanced messaging experience, the ability to block entire groups of channels, data cost sensitivity in JobScheduler, an ImageDecoder for drawables and bitmaps, and new broadcast intent types.
Multi-camera support, HDR VP9 video support, and more
Among other exciting new features that Google added in Android 9, we can mention multi-camera support allowing you to access streams from two or more physical cameras at the same time, support for external USB and UVC cameras, support for rendering and displaying GIF and WebP animated images, as well as built-in support for the HDR (High Dynamic Range) VP9 Profile 2 video codec.
There's also support for HEIF-encoded images, Neural Networks API 1.1 with support for nine new ops, client-side encryption of Android backups, several new accessibility features, navigation semantics, multiple improvements to the Autofill framework, new Media APIs, and a number of security enhancements. For more details, check out the Android P Features and APIs document.
With the first Developer Preview out, we're looking at an early or mid-August release of the Android 9 mobile operating system, whose codename will start with the letter P. Until then, Google should release a new Developer Preview milestone in each of the upcoming months. If you plan on becoming an early adopter, check out the Android 9 Developer Preview installation instructions.
