Are you an Android developer eagerly awaiting the next big update? Well, your wait is over with the arrival of Android 14! This latest version of the Android operating system, known as Upside Down Cake, brings a plethora of exciting features, promising to revolutionize app design and development. In this article, we will explore Android 14 from a developer’s perspective, diving deep into its innovative features, the impact on app design, and the best practices for leveraging its powerful capabilities.

Minimum Android Studio Version required: Android Studio Flamingo | 2022.2.1 or higher.

What’s New in Android 14?

Android 14 brings a host of new features and updates for developers to take advantage of. Let’s dive into some of the most significant changes.

Performance and Efficiency

Freezing cached applications

Android 14 introduced several restrictions on the use of cached applications. After a brief interval, we freeze cached apps on Android 14, giving them no CPU time. Cache-based programmes use up to 50% fewer CPU cycles in Android 14 Beta populations when compared to Android 13 public devices. Therefore, outside of standard Android app lifecycle APIs like foreground services, JobScheduler, or WorkManager, background work is prohibited.

Optimized broadcasts

We changed how apps get context-registered broadcasts once they enter a cached state; they may be queued, and recurring ones, like BATTERY_CHANGED, may be combined into a single broadcast, in order to keep frozen applications frozen longer (i.e., not receive CPU time).

Faster app launches

With broadcast optimizations and cached apps, we were able to raise the platform’s long-standing caps on the maximum number of cached apps in Android 14, which decreased the number of cold app starts, which is based on the RAM capacity of the device. The beta group experienced 20% fewer cold app starts on 8GB devices and nearly 30% fewer on 12GB devices. In comparison to warm companies, cold startups are slower and require more electricity. This approach effectively reduces total programme starting times as well as battery consumption.

Reduced memory footprint

The Android user experience can be greatly enhanced by improving the Android Runtime (ART). One of the most important metrics we consider is code size; smaller generated files are better for memory (RAM and storage). With no degradation in speed, Android 14’s ART optimizations lower code size by an average of 9.3%.

Customization

Since customization is fundamental to the Android experience, Android 14 maintains our promise to empower users to tailor their experience to meet their unique requirements. This includes improved accessibility and internationalization tools.

Bigger fonts with non-linear scaling: With Android 14, users will be able to magnify text by 200%. The maximum text size scale for Pixel devices used to be 130%. A non-linear font scaling curve is automatically applied to text that is large enough to keep it from increasing at the same rate as smaller text. Learn more here.

Per-app language preferences: You can dynamically update your app’s localeConfig with LocaleManager.setOverrideLocaleConfig to customize the set of languages displayed in the per-app language list in Android Settings.

IMEs can now use LocaleManager.getApplicationLocales to know the UI language of the current app to update the keyboard language. Starting with Android Studio Giraffe and AGP 8.1, you can configure your app to support Android 13’s per-app language preferences automatically.

Regional preferences: Users can customize temperature units, the first day of the week, and numerical systems based on their regional preferences.

Grammatical Inflection: You may add support for users who speak languages with grammatical gender more quickly thanks to the Grammatical Inflection API. All you have to do to display customized translations is incorporate the API and add translations that are inflected for every grammatical gender in the languages that are affected.

New media capabilities

Ultra HDR for images: With support for the Ultra HDR image format, Android 14 adds support for 10-bit high dynamic range (HDR) photographs. Because of the format’s complete backward compatibility with JPEG, programmes can work with HDR photographs with ease.

Zoom, Focus, Postview, and more in Camera Extensions: With Android 14, Camera Extensions are enhanced and expanded, enabling apps to manage longer processing times and, on compatible devices, better photographs through the use of compute-intensive algorithms like low-light photography.

Lossless USB audio: Lossless audio formats are supported on Android 14 devices, enabling audiophile-quality experiences when using USB-wired headsets.

New graphics capabilities

Custom meshes with vertex and fragment shaders: Custom meshes, which are defined as triangles or triangle strips and may optionally be indexed, are now supported by Android 14. Custom properties, vertex strides, variables, and AGSL-written vertex/fragment shaders are used to specify these meshes.

Hardware buffer renderer for Canvas: In Android 14, HardwareBufferRenderer is introduced to help with drawing with hardware acceleration into a HardwareBuffer using Android’s Canvas API. This is especially useful if your use case involves low-latency drawing through SurfaceControl communication with the system compositor.

User experience

Predictive Back: In addition to the back-to-home animation seen in Android 13, Android 14 brings two additional Predictive Back system animations: cross-activity and cross-task. To give more time for refinement and to let more apps choose to use Predictive Back, the system animations are still hidden behind a developer option. However, users can now access Material and Jetpack Predictive Back animations.

Privacy and security

Data sharing updates: When an app shares location data with third parties, users will see a new section in the location runtime permission dialogue where they can manage the app’s data access and obtain further information.

Partial access to photos and videos: Android 14 users can now allow your app access to only specific images and videos when it asks any of the visual media permissions (READ_MEDIA_IMAGES / READ_MEDIA_VIDEO) introduced in SDK 33. We advise using our most recent best practices to modify your app in light of this update.

App compatibility

Android prioritizes app compatibility to make updates faster and more seamless with each platform release. To offer you more time to make any necessary app modifications, we’ve made the majority of changes to Android 14 opt-in until your app targets SDK version 34. We’ve also improved our tools and processes to help you get ready sooner.

Easier testing and debugging of changes: This year, Android will make many opt-in modifications toggleable once more to make it easier for you to test the changes before they impact your app. You can use the toggles in Developer settings or adb to individually force-enable or deactivate the changes. See the information on this link.

How to Get Started with Android 14?

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest release of Android Studio Hedgehog. Once you’re set-up, here are some of the things you should do:

Try the new features and APIs. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
Test your current app for compatibility – learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14. Install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
Test your app with opt-in changes – Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.
Update your app with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant – Android Studio Hedgehog now filters and identifies the specific Android 14 API changes that are relevant to your app, and walks you through the steps to upgrade your targetSdkVersion with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant.

Conclusion

Android 14 is offering an array of new features and improvements that can elevate app design and development to new heights and ensure your app is compatible and provides a great user experience. By embracing the customization options, developers can adapt their apps to meet the ever-changing preferences and needs of users creating more engaging and user-friendly applications.

Reference taken from: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/10/android-14-is-live-in-aosp.html

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/14/summary

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/14/behavior-changes-14

About the Author:

Anand Singh is currently working with Mantra Labs as a Tech Manager. He has a strong knowledge of mobile development.

The software development landscape is evolving rapidly, demanding unprecedented levels of speed, quality, and efficiency. To keep pace, organizations are turning to platform engineering. This innovative approach empowers development teams by providing a self-service platform that automates and streamlines infrastructure provisioning, deployment pipelines, and security. By bridging the gap between development and operations, platform engineering fosters standardization, and collaboration, accelerates time-to-market, and ensures the delivery of secure and high-quality software products. Let’s dive into how platform engineering can revolutionize your software delivery lifecycle.

The Rise of Platform Engineering

The rise of DevOps marked a significant shift in software development, bringing together development and operations teams for faster and more reliable deployments. As the complexity of applications and infrastructure grew, DevOps teams often found themselves overwhelmed with managing both code and infrastructure.

Platform engineering offers a solution by creating a dedicated team focused on building and maintaining a self-service platform for application development. By standardizing tools and processes, it reduces cognitive overload, improves efficiency, and accelerates time-to-market.

Platform engineers are the architects of the developer experience. They curate a set of tools and best practices, such as Kubernetes, Jenkins, Terraform, and cloud platforms, to create a self-service environment. This empowers developers to innovate while ensuring adherence to security and compliance standards.

Role of DevOps and Cloud Engineers

Platform engineering reshapes the traditional development landscape. While platform teams focus on building and managing self-service infrastructure, application teams handle the development of software. To bridge this gap and optimize workflows, DevOps engineers become essential on both sides.

Platform and cloud engineering are distinct but complementary disciplines. Cloud engineers are the architects of cloud infrastructure, managing services, migrations, and cost optimization. On the other hand, platform engineers build upon this foundation, crafting internal developer platforms that abstract away cloud complexity.

Key Features of Platform Engineering:

Let’s dissect the core features that make platform engineering a game-changer for software development:

Abstraction and User-Friendly Platforms:

An internal developer platform (IDP) is a one-stop shop for developers. This platform provides a user-friendly interface that abstracts away the complexities of the underlying infrastructure. Developers can focus on their core strength – building great applications – instead of wrestling with arcane tools.

But it gets better. Platform engineering empowers teams through self-service capabilities.This not only reduces dependency on other teams but also accelerates workflows and boosts overall developer productivity.

Collaboration and Standardization

Close collaboration with application teams helps identify bottlenecks and smooth integration and fosters a trust-based environment where communication flows freely.

Standardization takes center stage here. Equipping teams with a consistent set of tools for automation, deployment, and secret management ensures consistency and security.

Identifying the Current State

Before building a platform, it’s crucial to understand the existing technology landscape used by product teams. This involves performing a thorough audit of the tools currently in use, analyzing how teams leverage them, and identifying gaps where new solutions are needed. This ensures the platform we build addresses real-world needs effectively.

Security

Platform engineering prioritizes security by implementing mechanisms for managing secrets such as encrypted storage solutions. The platform adheres to industry best practices, including regular security audits, continuous vulnerability monitoring, and enforcing strict access controls. This relentless vigilance ensures all tools and processes are secure and compliant.

The Platform Engineer’s Toolkit For Building Better Software Delivery Pipelines

Platform engineering is all about streamlining and automating critical processes to empower your development teams. But how exactly does it achieve this? Let’s explore the essential tools that platform engineers rely on:

Building Automation Powerhouses:

Infrastructure as Code (IaC):

Tools like Terraform and Ansible are the popular choices for IaC. They automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration, eliminating manual errors and enabling consistent, repeatable deployments.

CI/CD Pipelines:

Tools like Jenkins and GitLab CI/CD are essential for automating testing and deployment processes, ensuring applications are built, tested, and delivered with speed and reliability.

Maintaining Observability:

Monitoring and Alerting:

Prometheus and Grafana is a powerful duo that provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities. Prometheus scrapes applications for valuable metrics, while Grafana transforms this data into easy-to-understand visualizations for troubleshooting and performance analysis.

All-in-one Monitoring Solutions:

Tools like New Relic and Datadog offer a broader feature set, including application performance monitoring (APM), log management, and real-time analytics. These platforms help teams to identify and resolve issues before they impact users proactively.

Site Reliability Tools To Ensure High Availability and Scalability:

Container Orchestration:

Kubernetes orchestrates and manages container deployments, guaranteeing high availability and seamless scaling for your applications.

Log Management and Analysis:

The ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) is the go-to tool for log aggregation and analysis. It provides valuable insights into system behavior and performance, allowing teams to maintain consistent and reliable operations.

Managing Infrastructure

Secret Management:

HashiCorp Vault protects secretes, centralizes, and manages sensitive data like passwords and API keys, ensuring security and compliance within your infrastructure.

Cloud Resource Management:

Tools like AWS CloudFormation and Azure Resource Manager streamline cloud deployments. They automate the creation and management of cloud resources, keeping your infrastructure scalable, secure, and easy to manage. These tools collectively ensure that platform engineering can handle automation scripts, monitor applications, maintain site reliability, and manage infrastructure smoothly.

The Future is AI-Powered:

The platform engineering landscape is constantly evolving, and AI is rapidly transforming how we build and manage software delivery pipelines. The tools like Terraform, Kubecost, Jenkins X, and New Relic AI facilitate AI capabilities like:

Enhance security
Predict infrastructure requirements
Optimize resource security
Predictive maintenance
Optimize monitoring process and cost

Conclusion

Platform engineering is becoming the cornerstone of modern software development. Gartner estimates that by 2026, 80% of development companies will have internal platform services and teams to improve development efficiency. This surge underscores the critical role platform engineering plays in accelerating software delivery and gaining a competitive edge.

With a strong foundation in platform engineering, organizations can achieve greater agility, scalability, and efficiency in the ever-changing software landscape. Are you ready to embark on your platform engineering journey?

Building a robust platform requires careful planning, collaboration, and a deep understanding of your team’s needs. At Mantra Labs, we can help you accelerate your software delivery. Connect with us to know more.

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Android 14: Unlocking New Possibilities for Developers

What’s New in Android 14?

Performance and Efficiency

Customization

New media capabilities

New graphics capabilities

User experience

Privacy and security

App compatibility

How to Get Started with Android 14?

Conclusion

Platform Engineering: Accelerating Development and Deployment

The Rise of Platform Engineering

Role of DevOps and Cloud Engineers

Key Features of Platform Engineering:

Abstraction and User-Friendly Platforms:

Collaboration and Standardization

Identifying the Current State

Security

The Platform Engineer’s Toolkit For Building Better Software Delivery Pipelines

Building Automation Powerhouses:

Infrastructure as Code (IaC):

CI/CD Pipelines:

Maintaining Observability:

Monitoring and Alerting:

All-in-one Monitoring Solutions:

Site Reliability Tools To Ensure High Availability and Scalability:

Container Orchestration:

Log Management and Analysis:

Managing Infrastructure

Secret Management:

Cloud Resource Management:

The Future is AI-Powered:

Conclusion

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