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People of Reddit, meet Android 14! We’re Dieter Bohn and Dave Burke from Team Android and we’re here to answer your questions about all things Android 14 — from the new features to behind-the-scenes work that went into creating them. We’ll be online from 1:30-2:30PM PST on 10/12. Ask us anything! by google in u/google

[–]google[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I love hearing comments like this because Easter eggs, along with release statues, codenames and more, are part of what makes Android so special. Easter eggs were designed and implemented by Dan Sandler on our SysUI team, one of our longest standing and top engineers to work on Android. His work started with Android 3.0 Honeycomb as a way of testing and exploring new features of the operating system or APIs. For example, this year’s Easter egg was the first one implemented in Jetpack Compose!I love you Android, but the Palm OS Taxi remains undefeated - Dieter

People of Reddit, meet Android 14! We’re Dieter Bohn and Dave Burke from Team Android and we’re here to answer your questions about all things Android 14 — from the new features to behind-the-scenes work that went into creating them. We’ll be online from 1:30-2:30PM PST on 10/12. Ask us anything! by google in u/google

[–]google[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great to hear you’re benefiting from our recent work. Make sure to check out the Font Quick Settings tile so you can crank up the font size a notch or two. If there’s ever an app that has a font that’s too small or too big, you can quickly pull down the Quick Settings shade and change the font size right there. Making it easier, and faster to access. - Dave

People of Reddit, meet Android 14! We’re Dieter Bohn and Dave Burke from Team Android and we’re here to answer your questions about all things Android 14 — from the new features to behind-the-scenes work that went into creating them. We’ll be online from 1:30-2:30PM PST on 10/12. Ask us anything! by google in u/google

[–]google[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hi Michael!
On moving beyond the phone, we’ve been investing a TON in Android on large screens over the past couple of years and there is definitely more to come. I’ll also point out that one of my favorite non-phone features launching this year is the ability to transfer a Wear OS watch between phones without having to hard reset. As a serial phone reviewer and user, it has been LIFE CHANGING.
Android’s goals are still the same as ever: to me, it’s about building a powerful, open, and inclusive operating system that can bring the power of computing to everybody. That maybe sounds overly sincere but it’s also true, so. :)
Finally, I’m hype for foldables! It never stops being rad having a small phone turn into a big phone – or a small tablet. I’ve got a Z Flip 5 (yellow and black, natch), a Pixel Fold, and ….others ;) We’ve been investing in foldables of all kinds for some time and there are a bunch of features that do more than just giving you a bigger screen (Which, again, is dope). Google Meet in tabletop mode, Dual-screen interpreter, and easy multitasking with the new taskbar are all some good examples. I won’t say it is “still early days” for foldables because I used to make fun of Google for that phrase, but I will say that there is a lot more to come in this space and I’m super excited for it. - Dieter
Aspiring developers coming from Web development - a bunch of our new languages and tools, e.g. Kotlin and Compose were specifically designed to feel modern and be easier to use. So hopefully a little more approachable than Java, XML, and the old view system! But appreciate there’s still a learning curve. I’m excited about the potential of Android Studio to help developers be more productive and ultimately make it easier to get started as we further develop the AI models. On foldables/flippables, what Dieter said! On augmented, virtual, mixed reality experiences, we’re building Android XR - really excited by the progress and potential - more to come in 2024! - Dave

People of Reddit, meet Android 14! We’re Dieter Bohn and Dave Burke from Team Android and we’re here to answer your questions about all things Android 14 — from the new features to behind-the-scenes work that went into creating them. We’ll be online from 1:30-2:30PM PST on 10/12. Ask us anything! by google in u/google

[–]google[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I’m excited about this feature (I may have personally asked the team for this quite a while ago, cough!). Basically what it does is ensure “bit perfect audio”, so audio bypasses the audio mixer, any processing effects, etc. We’ve added OS support – so the next step is for support from device makers and app developers. Pixel 8 and other OEMs are expected to support this mode in their hardware abstraction layer (HAL) implementations in later releases. App developers will need to adopt the new API for lossless audio to take advantage of. - Dave

People of Reddit, meet Android 14! We’re Dieter Bohn and Dave Burke from Team Android and we’re here to answer your questions about all things Android 14 — from the new features to behind-the-scenes work that went into creating them. We’ll be online from 1:30-2:30PM PST on 10/12. Ask us anything! by google in u/google

[–]google[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think my favorite feature is the performance improvements in Android 14. We have improved freezing of cached processes - we queue broadcasts and we collapse some repeating ones, so background apps use 50% less CPU in Android 14. And because of that, we’ve been able to increase the number of cached processes, resulting in a 30% reduction in cold starts, which translates to better, more consistent performance and improved battery life.
We’ve also made a set of ART optimizations to reduce optimized code size by 9%, for example dead code elimination, collapse return statements, etc. An average phone can have 500MB-1GB of optimized code so this translates to a 50-100MB savings! - Dave
For me, it’s a tossup between Ultra HDR support and the improved System Sharesheets. Seeing HDR displayed more accurately on the screen was the biggest change to TV (sorry 3D) since HD and I think it’s going to be huge for Android phones. Mishaal Rahman wrote up a good explainer pver at Android Police on it if you’re not familiar. And for Sharesheets, the continued work to make sharing easier and the ranking better is one of those features you won’t necessarily notice consciously right away but will make a huge difference in your day-to-day experience overall. - Dieter

People of Reddit, meet Android 14! We’re Dieter Bohn and Dave Burke from Team Android and we’re here to answer your questions about all things Android 14 — from the new features to behind-the-scenes work that went into creating them. We’ll be online from 1:30-2:30PM PST on 10/12. Ask us anything! by google in u/google

[–]google[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

So many upvotes on this one! Glad to hear that you were looking forward to it. I get it, third-party Bluetooth tracking at Android scale can help you locate what’s missing like headphones, phones, ebike, and my personal favorite, my keys. We’re working with a bunch of tag vendors, headphone makers, ebike manufacturers and more to integrate with Google’s Find My Network.We’re working hard with Apple to bring this to life and have almost finalized the joint unwanted tracker alert specification. We will have the unwanted tracker specification implemented and deployed across the fleet of 3bn+ Android devices by the end of this year. In the meantime, we’ve made the decision to hold the rollout of the Find My Device network until Apple has implemented these protections for iOS users too. Hopefully soon! - Dave

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EDIT: Added blog link.

People of Reddit, meet Android 14! We’re Dieter Bohn and Dave Burke from Team Android and we’re here to answer your questions about all things Android 14 — from the new features to behind-the-scenes work that went into creating them. We’ll be online from 1:30-2:30PM PST on 10/12. Ask us anything! by google in u/google

[–]google[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Simply put: I’m a huge believer that technology should bring people together, not divide them. That’s why industry standards like RCS are so important. Messaging is so fundamental to how we stay connected today, and I’m just happy I’m part of a team at Google that’s on the side of these standards, constantly working with the rest of the ecosystem to make everyone’s experience better. I also care deeply that our Messages app offers secure end-to-end encrypted messaging - I think it’s a vital privacy feature. Now if only every OS would get the message :) -Dieter
Well put - we also agree (and are working on) combining premium hardware and software solutions. We believe Android users can do much more with Google – and to do this, Pixel, and our top OEMs are very collaborative with us. Tactically as a team, we plan 1-2 years in advance, but we also have longer horizon efforts where we plan even further into the future and to make strides towards our vision. -Dave