Google officially announced the next version of Android M Developers Preview yesterday. Android M developer’s preview 2 has started rolling out worldwide for Nexus devices. The update of Developers preview includes many improvements and fixes bugs, which were reported by developers testing Android M.
Android M developers preview 2 comes with Build number MPZ79M for Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and Nexus player. All Nexus devices running on Android M Developers preview 1 will get an OTA update very soon and developers using emulator can update Android M preview system images from SDK Manager in Android Studio.
According to Android developers official blog, Developers Preview 2 includes an updated platform code and neat-final APIs for validating apps. The new system images also includes Google Play services 7.6. Other updates in Android M includes fingerprint support, granular app permission, custom tabs in chrome, improved app linking, and many more. There are also some changes in permissions of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, remote Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Mac’s and many more.
There are fixes for many issues reported by Developers including Text Input Layout, Camera Permission etc. Check out more changes listed by Android Developers blogs.
Permissions changes:
- The android.permission.USE_FINGERPRINT permission now has “normal” protection level, so it is no longer necessary to request this permission directly from the user. The USE_FINGERPRINT permission enables fingerprints to be enabled for authentication, but does not give the requesting app access to the enrollment/fingerprint administration flow.
- The android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission has protection level “dangerous”, meaning that apps wanting to write to external storage will need to request permission from the user at runtime. Both READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE are members of the STORAGE permission group.
- Remote Bluetooth/Wi-Fi MAC’s now require either the android.permission.LOCATION_FINE or android.permission.LOCATION_COARSE permission.
- Some accounts and identity permissions are moved to CONTACTS permissions group and others are removed or granted based on account type. In particular, android.permission.USE_CREDENTIALS, android.permission.MANAGE_ACCOUNTS, and android.permission.AUTHENTICATE_ACCOUNTS are ungrouped pending further changes in a later release.
- The Wi-Fi permissions android.permission.CHANGE_WIFI_STATE, android.permission.CHANGE_WIMAX_STATE, and android.permission.CHANGE_WIFI_MULTICAST_STATE now have protection level “normal”.
- The Bluetooth permissions android.permission.BLUETOOTH and android.permission.BLUETOOTH_ADMIN now have protection level “normal”.
- Bookmarks and subscribed feeds permissions are removed.
- Apps included in the system image are no longer granted dangerous permissions automatically. All apps should check for and request permissions at runtime.
- Introduces the utility method Activity.shouldShowRequestPermissionRationale(String), which lets your app see whether users have previously rejected a permission request. This lets you know that your app should explain the the user why it needs that permission. For more information see the Permissions developer guide.
Other changes:
- The android.app.AssistContent and android.app.AssistStructure classes are moved into a new package, android.app.assist.
- Bluetooth Stylus APIs are updated and include new callback events. The View.OnStylusButtonPressListener class is renamed to View.OnContextClickListener and GestureDetector.OnStylusButtonPressListener class to GestureDetector.OnContextClickListener.”
Android M is scheduled to release by the fall, so stay tuned with us, we expect a lot more information to come about Android M and we will keep you updated.
