Magic moments happen when your app does something very useful with minimal effort from your users -- like figuring out their location for them automatically. The new Places lesson in the Advanced Android App Development course teaches you how to add a Place Picker to your app so that users can pick a nearby location without having to type anything.
The Advanced Android App Development course, built by Udacity in conjunction with Google, is a follow-up course to Developing Android apps. The advanced course is for Android Developers who are ready to learn how to polish, productionize and publish their app, and even distribute it through Google Play.
Updates to the course also include an explanation of the new GCM Receiver, as well as an entirely new lesson on publishing your app, which explains how to build and sign an APK so you you can distribute your app on Google Play.
After all, why build an app if you can’t get it to your users?
The Holidays. Food for the body. Food for the mind. Google and Udacity offer you 31 courses that will make your mouth water and your mind dance. Savor one or several of our 31 self-paced online training courses to indulge your curiosity, expand your knowledge, and hone new skills. Choose from Android, Web, Entrepreneurship, or Cloud and Backend tracks. Are you ready?
Android
More and more people around the world are embracing mobile at an increasing pace, whether on their phones, in their cars, at home, and around their wrists. Learn to build apps for them!
Refine your web development skills for mobile. Create fast, fluid user experiences. Deploy for all desktop and mobile devices. Streamline checkout and payment. Learn how to build beautiful, performant, responsive applications for the world's largest platform.
Does your app need to support more users? (Congratulations!) Do you want to move data handling for an existing app from the device to the cloud? Learn how to take advantage of public cloud infrastructure to support millions of users and terabytes of data.
During our recent talk at Android Dev Summit, we discuss the state of testing on Android on the example of a simple Notes application that we created as part of our testing codelab. In one section of the talk, we discuss the problem of test flakiness and introduce a simple solution for setting up a hermetic testing environment.
Combatting flaky tests
UI tests with frameworks like Espresso or UI Automator can easily get flaky if the application has external dependencies that can sometimes fail or take long to respond. In short, flaky tests are tests that are not reliable (they can pass or fail randomly) which defeats the whole purpose of having tests in the first place.
A common solution to this problem is hermetic testing or, in other words, making sure that your tests are isolated from dependencies. Using fake implementations or fake servers that just return predefined data is a common way of dealing with this problem. Here are some good examples:
Network calls can be made via a fake API client or fake server that immediately returns data from files stored on disk instead of hitting the network. This bypasses the network's latency and flakiness as well as any errors originating on the real server.
Interactions with low-level framework APIs (especially those for accessing hardware, like camera or storage) can be passed through an intermediate interface. A fake implementation of this interface could return immediately, providing a reference to preloaded data, such as an image, without relying on the hardware.
Any sensors can be replaced with fakes too: GPS, microphone, accelerometer etc., giving you a chance to test on data that would be difficult to provide for the test in real life, like a preset location or a set of inputs simulating a gesture.
Dependency Injection (DI) is a software design pattern that facilitates testing, reusing modules and making them interchangeable. DI frameworks can help you deal with the boilerplate associated with this pattern but it can take a considerable amount of time to set them up and understand how they work. Before you are ready to commit to one of those frameworks for your app, you might want to explore an easier way, especially if your project requirements are simple.
Managing dependencies with product flavors
Product flavors is a powerful feature of Android Studio and our Android Gradle plugin that lets you swap Java classes at compile time and doesn't require additional libraries. Some typical examples of flavor dimensions are:
free/paid flavors to generate two different APKs that will be released on your distribution channels
stable/experimental to keep experiments in a different source set and generate beta versions quickly
We can leverage the same mechanism to create two separate versions of our app to help with hermetic testing:
prod - uses real implementation of services and components, using real data and resources
mock - for a version that contains fake implementations of dependencies that are hard to test
Create two directories: app/src/prod and app/src/mock
Create the class that you want to use for production code in the prod/java folder or move it from main/java. Make sure the main/java folder does not contain this class.
Create the same class (with the exact same class and file name) in the mock/java folder, but providing a different (fake) implementation that will be used for tests.
In the Build Variants window in Android Studio, choose the variant that you want to install or run tests against. A variant is the combination of a flavor and a build type.
Note: In gradle, the task names change when you add flavors. Instead of installDebug, you will now have to choose installProdDebug or installMockDebug.
Running your tests
With the prod and mock flavors configured and your mock implementation in place, you can now use the following gradle tasks to choose how your tests should run:
connectedMockDebugAndroidTest will merge the androidTest and androidTestMock directories and run every test found in the resulting source set. As these tests are run in a hermetic way, they will be faster and less flaky. This is ideal for a pre-submit check.
connectedProdDebugAndroidTest will use the real APIs and sensors so they might fail from time to time. If you have a Continuous Integration system, this task could be executed every night or used manually as a acceptance end-to-end test. Note that this task will run the tests in androidTest even if androidTestProd doesn't exist.
You can refer to our Android Testing Codelab to see how we used this method to provide different Injection class implementations, the one in prod providing real data and the other (mock) serving fake dependencies that use fake data for isolated test execution.
When you’re happy with your hermetic setup, you might want to give more flexibility to your build process and add even more dimensions to be able to interchange different components in your app. While the method discussed above is suitable for simple projects, for more complex situations it would be much better to invest some time to learn about and add a Dependency Injection framework to your project.
An early preview of the new Android Emulator is now available to try out. As a part of Android Studio 2.0, the latest version of the Android Emulator can help you test your app on a wide range of screens size and configurations beyond the physical Android hardware you use to test.Moreover, using the official Android emulator enables you to test with latest Android versions. Building on this foundation, the top two benefits of new Android emulator are:
Speed & Performance: When emulating the latest Android 6.0 release (Marshmallow), we now support Symmetric Multi-Processing and have made significant I/O improvements in both the emulator and ADB. This means you will have faster performance when you are testing your app.
Usability & User Interface: The new Android Emulator includes a brand new user interface to make the emulator easy to use. You no longer have to rely on command-line parameters to use the Android emulator. Common tasks and emulator features are now just a mouse click or a keyboard shortcut away.
We previewed the user interface at the Android Dev Summit. You can try it out today along with the new version of ADB for faster APK installation and file transfers to the emulator. Check out the video for a demonstration of the new Android Emulator.
Android Dev Summit 2015: Emulator Demo
We are seeking early feedback to continue to deliver the experience and features that will make you more productive.
New Features in Android Emulator Preview
Performance Improvements
CPU Performance
Android Studio now uses CPU acceleration on x86 emulator system images by default. Combined with new Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP) support in Android 6.0 Marshmallow system images, the Android emulators can perform even faster than many physical Android devices. Multi-core support not only makes your apps and the emulator run faster but it provides the added advantage of speeding up common developer tasks such as installing APKs. Also, with SMP you can test apps that specifically target multi-processor Android devices.
Faster ADB
In addition to faster CPU speeds in the emulator, there are a number of under-the-hood improvements that will make the experience faster. One of the bottlenecks in the development process that we worked on is the speed of pushing data between Android Studio and your device using ADB (Android Debug Bridge). When you use Android 6.0 Marshmallow and higher system images with the new Android Emulator, you can now push files across ADB up to five times faster than a real device. This will help you if you push large APK or files during your app development cycle.
User Interface
Toolbar
The new interface exposes some of the most common emulator actions in a new toolbar and control panel instead of solely relying on command line options. For the preview, the Android Emulator toolbar enables actions, such as volume control, screen rotation, and screen-shots of the emulator window.
Window Zooming & Scaling
Now you can resize your window simply by dragging a corner. You can also zoom and scroll to get a closer look at a portion of your screen.
Left: Zooming
Right: Window Scaling
Drag & Drop
With the new emulator, you can not only drag and drop APKs for quick installation, but you can also drag and drop any file to your emulator’s internal SD card to help in testing.
Drag and Drop Files
Extended UI Controls
In the extended controls window, additional options help you validate and test features in your app. As shown below, you can initiate a range of emulator actions such as making a virtual call, sending a virtual SMS, or controlling the power level of the emulator. You can additionally send a single GPS location point to the emulator or play back a custom set of KML or GPX points as well.
Phone Controls
Battery Controls
We are continuing to add more functionality and we will keep you up to date as we add more features.
What's Next & Setup
This is just the beginning of developments on the Android Emulator, so expect more features such as support more APIs levels, and adding more sensors with future versions of Android Studio. The new emulator along with Android Studio are available today on the Android Studio canary channel and tools preview channel.
Click here for details on how to setup the preview of the new Android Emulator.
We appreciate your feedback. Connect with us, the Android Studio development team, on Google+.
Android Studio 1.5 is now available in the stable release channel. The latest release is focused on delivering more stability, with most of the enhancements being made under the hood (along with addressing several bugs).
Some of the specific bug fixes, include the ability to use short names when code-completing custom views.
In addition to the stability improvements and bug fixes, we’ve added a new feature to the memory profiler. It can now assist you in detecting some of the most commonly known causes of leaked activities.
There are also several new lint checks. Here's one below which warns you if you are attempting to override resources referenced from the manifest.
If you’re already using Android Studio, you can check for updates from the navigation menu (Help → Check for Update [Windows/Linux] , Android Studio → Check for Updates [OS X]). For new users, you can learn more about Android Studio, or download the stable version from the Android Studio site.
As always, we welcome your feedback on how we can help you. You can also connect with the Android developer tools team via Google+. And don’t worry about what’s in the box from the video. It’s nothing. Really. Forget I mentioned it.
Gifted Mom is an app developed in Cameroon which provides users with basic, yet critical information about pregnancy, breastfeeding and child vaccinations. The widespread use of Android smartphones in Africa has meant that Gifted Mom has been able to reach more people at scale and improve lives.
Watch the creators of Gifted Mom, developer Alain Nteff and doctor Conrad Tankou, explain how they built their business and launched Gifted Mom on Google Play. They also talk about their plans to grow and help people in other developing countries across the continent in the next three years, in order to ultimately tackle maternal and infant mortality.
Posted by Alistair Pott, Product Manager, Google Play
Available in more than 190 countries, Google Play is a global platform for developers to build high quality apps and successful businesses. But every market has its own unique challenges and opportunities. Purchasing behavior, in particular, varies significantly between markets. So to provide developers with more flexibility, we've worked to adapt Google Play pricing options to better suit local consumers and make content more accessible.
Following a successful pilot in India earlier this year, today, developers have the option to reduce the price of their premium titles and in-app products in 17 more countries to these new minimum thresholds:
Countries affected:
Brazil: R$ 0.99 (was R$2.00)
Chile: CLP $200.00 (was CLP $500.00)
Colombia: COP$ 800.00 (was COP$ 2000.00)
Egypt: E£2 Previous (was E£7)
Hungary: Ft 125.00 (was Ft 225.00)
Indonesia: Rp 3,000.00 (was Rp 12,000.00)
Malaysia: RM 1.00 (was RM 3.50)
Mexico: MXN$ 5.00 (was MXN$ 9.90)
Nigeria: ₦40 (was ₦195)
Peru: S/. 0.99 (was S/. 3.00)
Philippines: ₱15.00 (was ₱43.00)
Poland: zł1.79 (was zł2.99)
Russia: руб 15.00 (was руб 30.00)
Saudi Arabia:﷼ 0.99 (was 4.00﷼)
South Africa: R3.99 (was R10.00)
Thailand: ฿10.00 (was ฿32.00)
Turkey: ₺0.59 (was ₺2.00)
Ukraine: ₴5.00 (was ₴8.00)
Vietnam: ₫6,000 (was ₫21,000.00)
You can lower the price of your apps and games right away by visiting the Google Play Developer Console and clicking on “Pricing & Distribution” or “In-app Products” for your apps.
We hope this change allows you to reach more people around the world so that you can continue to grow your business on Google Play.
Founded in 2010, Turkish mobile games developer Peak Games started developing games targeted to the local market and is now scaling globally. Their game ‘Spades Plus’ is growing in the US and the game generates over 70% of its mobile revenue from Android.
Watch Erdem İnan, Business Intelligence and Marketing Director, and İlkin Ulaş Balkanay, Head of Android Development, explain how Peak Games improved user engagement and increased installs with Google Play Store Listing experiments and app promotion right from within the Developer Console.
A bit more than five years ago, I got my first smartphone. It was the Nexus One. And I didn’t know it at the time, but it was hiding a zombie gingerbread painting inside it. The first (of now many) Android “platform” easter eggs.
Android actually has a long, rich history of various mysterious and silly things tucked away inside its code for developers to enjoy. But its “platform” or “version number” easter eggs are probably the most elaborate and well-known.
Earlier this summer, my friend at work Lo and I started this project to go find out about different Google stuff we’re curious about. And one of the things we wanted to know more about was how the Android lawn sculptures get made. Which lead to us also finding out about why Android names its releases after tasty treats, and making this video.
As we were digging deeper into Android traditions, I decided to head up to Cambridge to get the inside scoop about Android’s easter eggs tradition from Android Framework Engineer / Easter Egg Painter, Dan Sandler. Which we just made this video about.
We hope you enjoyed, and maybe discovered a thing or two. And if you’re still in the mood for more Android video fun, the Android Developers YouTube channel was kind enough to recently compile all of our Android and Nexus videos to date in this playlist. (Take a look if you enjoy phone guts, silly songs, and/or stuffing your face with marshmallows.)
And since our project is ongoing, you can always subscribe to our YouTube channel if you want to check out what new stuff we’ll be learning about next.
Thanks for reading, watching, and easter-egging with us!
One of the benefits of Android development is the flexibility provided by the large number of APIs in the Android framework and Support Library, not even including the Google Play services APIs. However, that can be a lot to understand, particularly when confronted with multiple options or design decisions. Thankfully, things are about to get a lot clearer with a new series: Android Development Patterns.
The goal of Android Development Patterns is to focus on the fundamental components and best practices that can make the biggest difference in your app. We spend time talking about the why behind each API, so that you know exactly what is best for your situation.
Centered on Android framework APIs, the Android Support Library, and high level app structure and design, we’ll augment the many videos on the Android Developers YouTube channel to bring the focus back towards Android development at its core.
Android Development Patterns are more than just videos. You’ll find written pro-tips from in-house experts at Google, such as Joanna Smith and Ian Lake, every week through the Android Development Patterns Google+ Collection.
Three new Android Marshmallow sample applications have gone live this week. As usual they are available directly from the Google Samples repository on GitHub or through the Android Studio samples browser.
Direct Share is a new feature in Android Marshmallow that provides APIs to make sharing more intuitive and quick for users. Direct Share allows users to share content to targets, such as contacts, within other apps. For example, the direct share target might launch an activity in a social network app, which lets the user share content directly to a specific friend in that app.
This sample is a dummy messaging app, and just like any other messaging apps, it receives intents for sharing a plain text. It demonstrates how to show some options directly in the list of share intent candidates. When a user shares some text from another app, this sample app will be listed as an option. Using the Direct Share feature, this app also shows some of contacts directly in the chooser dialog.
To enable Direct Share, apps need to implement a Service extending ChooserTargetService. Override the method onGetChooserTargets() and return a list of Direct Share options.
In your AndroidManifest.xml, add a meta-data tag in your Activity that receives the Intent. Specify android:name as android.service.chooser.chooser_target_service, and point the android:value to the Service.
Android 6.0 introduces new support for MIDI. This sample demonstrates how to use the MIDI API to receive and play MIDI messages coming from an attached input device (MIDI keyboard).
The Android MIDI API (android.media.midi) allows developers to connect a MIDI device to an Android device and process MIDI messages coming from it.
This sample demonstrates some basic features of the MIDI API, such as:
Enumeration of currently available devices (including name, vendor, capabilities, etc)
Notification when MIDI devices are plugged in or unplugged
Receiving and processing MIDI messages
It also contains a simple implementation of an oscillator and note playback.
A sample demonstrating how to use the MIDI API to receive and process MIDI signals coming from an attached device.
The Android MIDI API (android.media.midi) allows developers to connect a MIDI device to Android and process MIDI signals coming from it. This sample demonstrates some basic features of the MIDI API, such as enumeration of currently available devices (Information includes name, vendor, capabilities, etc), notification when MIDI devices are plugged in or unplugged, and receiving MIDI signals. This sample simply shows all the received MIDI signals to the screen log and does not play any sound for them.
Check out a sample today and jumpstart your Android Marshmallow development.
Australian developer Domain is part of a multi-platform property business, which provides search tools and information for buyers, sellers, renters, investors, and agents across Australia. The Domain Real Estate & Property app was voted a top five lifestyle app in Australia and now has three dedicated Android developers who work closely with their design and UX teams.
Product Manager, Henrique Marassi, and Android Developer, Gary Lo, explain how Domain successfully improved their user rating from 2.8 to 4.1 and increased monthly downloads by 44 percent by adopting Material Design and Play services to create a better user experience.
Learn more about how Domain found success on Google Play:
Material Design guidelines: How Material Design helps you create beautiful, engaging apps.
Google Play services: Learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it.
Find success on Google Play: Products and best practices to help your grow you business globally on Google Play.
Android 6.0 introduces a new runtime permission model that gives users more granular control over granting permissions requested from their apps and leads to faster app installs. Users can also revoke these permissions from Settings at any point of time. If an app running on the M Preview supports the new permissions model, the user does not have to grant any permissions when they install or upgrade the app. Developers should check for permissions that require runtime grant from users, and request them if the app doesn’t already have them.
To list all permissions that require runtime grant from users on Android 6.0 -
adb shell pm list permissions -g -d
RECORD_AUDIO
Apps should generally request as few permissions as possible. Voice search is an integral part of Android TV content discovery experience. When using the internal SpeechRecognizer to enable Voice Search, apps must declare RECORD_AUDIO permission in the manifest. RECORD_AUDIO requires explicit user grant during runtime in Android 6.0. When using the Android TV Leanback support library, apps can eliminate the need for requesting RECORD_AUDIO during runtime by using SpeechRecognitionCallback instead of SpeechRecognizer.
SearchActivity.java
Commit from Android TV Leanback Sample repository.
When SpeechRecognitionCallback is set, Android Leanback support library will let the your activity process the voice search action instead of using the internal SpeechRecognizer. The app can then use RecognizerIntent to support speech recognition.
If you have an Android TV app targeting API Level 23, please update the app to use SpeechRecognitionCallback and remove RECORD_AUDIO permission from your manifest.
What makes an app intuitive and easy to use? What makes it hard or frustrating? How can your app stand out in a competitive market? Learn the fundamentals of good Android design and the patterns that have proven to work on Android to help you to build better apps.
This 5-lesson series, available on Udacity, begins with a crash course on the fundamentals of Android UI design. It helps you to sort your DIPs from your pixels, to pick the right layouts and navigation structures and shows you how to style your app to match your brand. The rest of the course is a deep dive into the principles and implementation of material design to show you how to build beautiful consistent experiences that are right at home on Android.
Lesson 2 dives into the concept of tangible surfaces, and how they establish hierarchy to make your UI more understandable. Lesson 3 looks at applying bold graphic design, or how the principles of space, color, typography and imagery help you to create a beautiful, branded experience. Lesson 4 studies the use of meaningful motion to bring your apps to life and create a seamless and more intuitive experience. Finally, lesson 5 shows how adaptive design makes your app shine on any screen size.
This course is aimed at developers familiar with Android who want to boost their design skills or designers who want to understand more about the platform they’re creating for. The full course is available for free or you can enroll in Udacity’s Android Nanodegree for extra help and support. So sign up for the Android design for developers course and go build something brilliant!
Posted by Shannon Woods, Technical Program Manager
Developers of games and 3D graphics applications have one key challenge to meet: How complex a scene can they draw in a small fraction of a second? Much of the work in graphics development goes into organizing data so it can be efficiently consumed by the GPU for rendering. But even the most careful developers can hit unforeseen bottlenecks, in part because the drivers for some graphics processors may reorganize all of that data before it can actually be processed. The APIs used to control these drivers are also not designed for multi-threaded use, requiring synchronization with locks around calls that could be more efficiently done in parallel. All of this results in CPU overhead, which consumes time and power that you’d probably prefer to spend drawing your scene.
Lowering overhead and handing control to developers
In order to address some of the sources of CPU overhead and provide developers with more explicit control over rendering, we’ve been working to bring a new 3D rendering API, Vulkan™, to Android. Like OpenGL™ ES, Vulkan is an open standard for 3D graphics and rendering maintained by Khronos. Vulkan is being designed from the ground up to minimize CPU overhead in the driver, and allow your application to control GPU operation more directly. Vulkan also enables better parallelization by allowing multiple threads to perform work such as command buffer construction at once.
An API is only useful if it does what you expect
To make it easier to write an application once that works across a variety of devices, Android 5.0 Lollipop significantly expanded the Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) with over fifty thousand new tests for OpenGL ES, and many more have been added since. This provides an extensive open source test suite for identifying problems in drivers so that they can be fixed, creating a more robust and reliable experience for both developers and end users. For Vulkan, we’ll not only develop similar tests for use in the Android CTS, but we’ll also contribute them to Khronos for use in Vulkan’s own open source Conformance Test Suite. This will enable Khronos to test Vulkan drivers across platforms and hardware, and improve the 3D graphics ecosystem as a whole.
It’s all about developer choice
We’ll be working hard to help create, test, and ship Vulkan, but at the same time, we’re also going to contribute to and support OpenGL ES. As a developer, you’ll be able to choose which API is right for you: the simplicity of OpenGL ES, or the explicit control of Vulkan. We’re committed to providing an excellent developer experience, no matter which API you choose.
Vulkan is still under development, but you’ll be able to find specifications, tests, and tools once they are released at http://www.khronos.org/vulkan.
Previewed earlier this summer at Google I/O, Android Studio 1.3 is now available on the stable release channel. We appreciated the early feedback from those developers on our canary and beta channels to help ship a great product.
Android Studio 1.3 is our biggest feature release for the year so far, which includes a new memory profiler, improved testing support, and full editing and debugging support for C++. Let’s take a closer look.
New Features in Android Studio 1.3
Performance & Testing Tools
Android Memory (HPROF) Viewer
Android Studio now allows you to capture and analyze memory snapshots in the native Android HPROF format.
Allocation Tracker
In addition to displaying a table of memory allocations that your app uses, the updated allocation tracker now includes a visual way to view the your app allocations.
APK Tests in Modules
For more flexibility in app testing, you now have the option to place your code tests in a separate module and use the new test plugin (‘com.android.test’) instead of keeping your tests right next to your app code. This feature does require your app project to use the Gradle Plugin 1.3.
Code and SDK Management
App permission annotations
Android Studio now has inline code annotation support to help you manage the new app permissions model in the M release of Android. Learn more about code annotations.
Data Binding Support
New data brinding features allow you to create declarative layouts in order to minimize boilerplate code by binding your application logic into your layouts. Learn more about data binding.
SDK Auto Update & SDK Manager
Managing Android SDK updates is now a part of the Android Studio. By default, Android Studio will now prompt you about new SDK & Tool updates. You can still adjust your preferences with the new & integrated Android SDK Manager.
C++ Support
As a part of the Android 1.3 stable release, we included an Early Access Preview of the C++ editor & debugger support paired with an experimental build plugin. See the Android C++ Preview page for information on how to get started. Support for more complex projects and build configurations is in development, but let us know your feedback.
Time to Update
An important thing to remember is that an update to Android Studio does not require you to change your Android app projects. With updating, you get the latest features but still have control of which build tools and app dependency versions you want to use for your Android app.
For current developers on Android Studio, you can check for updates from the navigation menu. For new users, you can learn more about Android Studio on the product overview page or download the stable version from the Android Studio download site.
We are excited to launch this set of features in Android Studio and we are hard at work developing the next set of tools to make develop Android development easier on Android Studio. As always we welcome feedback on how we can help you. Connect with the Android developer tools team on Google+.
Play Store or App Store optimization? A sophisticated paid advertising strategy? A viral social media campaign?
While all of these strategies could help you grow your user base, the foundation for rapid growth is much more basic and fundamental—you need an engaging app.
This handbook will walk you through practical ways to increase your app’s user engagement to help you eventually transition to growth. You’ll learn how to:
Pick the right metric to represent user engagement
Look at data to audit your app and find areas to fix
Promote your app after you’ve reached a healthy level of user engagement
Posted by Peter Lubbers, Senior Program Manager, Google Developer Training
We know how important it is for you to efficiently develop the skills to build better Android apps and be successful in your jobs. To meet your training needs, we’ve partnered with Udacity to create Android training courses, ranging from beginner to more advanced content.
Last week at Google I/O we announced the Android Nanodegree, an education credential that is designed for busy people to learn new skills and advance their careers in a short amount of time from anywhere at any time. The nanodegree ties together our Android courses, and provides you with a certificate that may help you be a more marketable Android developer.
Training courses
All training courses are developed and taught by expert Google instructors from the Developer Platform team. In addition to updating our popular Developing Android Apps course and releasing Advanced Android App Development, we now have courses for everyone from beginning programmers to advanced developers who want to configure their Gradle build settings. And then there's all the fun stuff in between—designing great-looking, high performance apps, making your apps run on watches, TVs, and in cars, and using Google services like Maps, Ads, Analytics, and Fit.
Each course is available individually, without charge, at udacity.com/google. Our instructors are waiting for you:
Android Nanodegree
You can also enroll in the new Android Nanodegree for a monthly subscription fee, which gives you access to coaches who will review your code, provide guidance on your project, answer questions about the class, and help keep you on track when you need it.
More importantly, you will learn by doing, focusing only on where you need to grow. Since the Nanodegree is based on your skills and the projects in your portfolio, you do not need to complete the courses that address the skills you already have. You can focus on writing the code and building the projects that meet the requirements for the Nanodegree credential. We’ll also be inviting 50 Android Nanodegree graduates to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, for a three day intensive Android Career Summit in November. Participants will have the opportunity to experience Google’s company culture and attend workshops focused on developing their personal career paths. Participants will then leverage the skills learned from Udacity’s Android Nanodegree during a two-day hackathon.
To help you learn more about this program and and courses within it, Google and Udacity are partnering up for an "Ask the Experts" live streamed series. In the first episode on Wednesday, June 3rd at 2pm PDT, Join Sebastian Thrun, Peter Lubbers and Jocelyn Becker who will be answering your questions on the Nanodegree. RSVP here and ask and vote for questions here.
Android training in Arabic
We also believe that everyone has the right to learn how to develop Android apps. Today, there is a great need for developers in countries outside of the United States as software powers every industry from food and transportation to healthcare and retail. As a first step in getting the Android Nanodegree localized and targeted for individual countries, we have worked with the Government of Egypt and Udacity to create end-to-end translations of our top Android courses into Arabic (including fully dubbed video). Google will offer 2,000 scholarships to students to get a certificate for completing the Arabic version of the Android Fundamentals course. Google will also host job fairs and sessions for students with local employers and the Egyptian Government. For more information, see www.udacity.com/egypt.
Complete Android course catalog
Here are the currently-planned courses in the Android Nanodegree:
In order to make the best possible games, Wooga works on roughly 40 concepts and prototypes per year, out of which 10 go into production, around seven soft launch, and only two make it to global launch. It’s what they call “the hit filter." For their latest title, Agent Alice, they follow up with new episodes every week to maintain player interest and engagement over time.
The ability to quickly iterate both live and under development games is therefore key to Wooga’s business model — Android and Google Play provide them the tools they need and mean that new features and updates are made on Android first, before they get to other platforms.
Find out more from Sebastian Kriese, Head of Partnerships, and Pal Tamas Feher, Head of Engineering, and learn how the iteration features of Android and Google Play have contributed to successes such as Diamond Dash, Jelly Splash, and Agent Alice.
You can find out more about building successful games businesses on Android and Google Play at Google I/O 2015: in person, on the live stream, or session recordings after the event. Check out the following:
Developers connecting the world through Google Play - Hear how the new mobile ecosystem including Google Play and Android are empowering developers to make good on the dream of connecting the world through technology to improve people's lives. This session will be live streamed.
Growing games with Google — In addition to consoles, PC, and browser gaming, as well as phone and tablet games, there are emerging fields including virtual reality and mobile games in the living room. This talk covers how Google is helping developers across this broad range of platforms. This session will be live streamed.
What’s new in the Google Play Developer Console - Google Play’s new launches will help you acquire more users and improve the quality of your app. Hear an overview of the latest features and how you can start taking advantage of them in the Developer Console.
Smarter approaches to app testing — Hear about the new ways Google can help maximize the success of your next app launch with cheaper and easier testing strategies.
We've been in San Francisco talking with the team from The Hunt — a style and product sharing community. They've recently lifted the rate at which Android users start hunts to 20 percent after successfully implementing material design in the app, which is a 30 percent improvement over other platforms. As The Hunt’s Product Designer Jenny Davis puts it, “it felt like having a team of design experts on hand,” which lets them focus on what matters to the Android user.
But as we find out, that's not the whole story. Beta testing — managed from the Google Play Developer Console — also allowed them to iterate design and features daily. Based on feedback, they introduced the floating action button, which helped boost new hunts and helpful responses from the community. This speed and freedom is something the team thought possible only with their mobile website, until they started working with the Android tools.
Watch the video to discover more about how design and rapid iteration has been key to building a strong community.
Learn about using the tools that have helped improve user engagement for The Hunt:
Material design — learn more about material design and how it helps you create beautiful, engaging apps.
Beta testing — discover how to easily deliver test versions of your app to users for feedback before release.
