Announced: Android L, developer preview starting Thursday

Posted by: Lennie J. on Wednesday, June 25, 2014 in Android L, Google I/O, News 0

Google has just announced Android L at its Google I/O event in California. I speculated earlier that the next Android version would begin with L but it is in fact just L. New things like enhanced background multitasking, software enhancements to both the CPU and GPU, and smart unlocking were announced. A developer preview will also be available Thursday morning (yes tomorrow) for the Nexus 5 and 7 devices.

Material Design is the new design language of Android L. It is color customizable and is slightly flatter than before. Developers can now easily change the color themes to match the theme of the company. New animations are also included with Android L. Things like sliding panels and ripple effects of touch are present. Android L also uses realtime lighting to create 3D views with realtime shadows.

Notifications have a received a big enhancement for Andoird L. Users can now answer and decline phone calls while in other apps. Onstage, a demo was showed of a video game taking up the full screen of the device. A call was received and a prompt showed up from the top of the screen asking to decline or answer the call. The game was never truly interrupted. Users can also see notifications on the lock screen. With a tap, a detailed look of the notification appears, and with a swipe from the button up, the phone is unlocked.

Android L is also smart enough to know when the owner of the phone has the device in hand and when someone else does. If the owner is unlocking the device, and has a password locked phone, the password prompt will not show up. If another user has the device in hand and attempts to unlock it, the password prompt will appear. This is done with some cleaver trickery with Android Wear. Whoever has the watch on, is seen as the owner and can bypass password protection. 

CPU and GPU enhancements were also demoed on stage with a live view of Unreal Engine 4 running on a tablet with an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor. Head here for more tech news.

Pictures Taken From Google I/O Event