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posted by martyb on Saturday May 30 2015, @08:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the Marvelous-Minty-Marshmallow dept.

Google announced "Android M" at the Google I/O developer conference. It follows "Android L," or Lollipop, which only represents about 10% of the install base.

Google outlined six major areas of improvement in Android M. Permissions controls will be more granular, with apps asking for permission when some features are used (e.g. "Allow WhatsApp to access your microphone?"). You can install apps without allowing them all of the permissions they ask for, and manage permissions after the fact at any time. However, only apps targeting Android M with the latest Android SDK will allow these changes; existing apps won't automatically gain this functionality unless they update.

A feature called Chrome Custom Tabs will allow apps to have a customized instance of the Chrome browser run atop the application when a user clicks on a hyperlink. This allows customization of the user interface, increases performance vs. launching the full browser, and means that "all of a user's autofill data, passwords, and cache are available when they open links within that application." Custom Tabs are an alternative to using a WebView. Apps will also be able to communicate with their own web servers to verify that links to their own websites should be redirected to the app. Previously, clicking a link may bring up a menu asking if you want to complete the action using a browser or an app.

Users will be able to use their fingerprint to authorize Android Pay transactions. Other apps will also be able to use the fingerprint authentication API.

Finally, Android M will introduce a new feature called Doze, which will use motion detection to decide whether the device should shut down background activity to reduce idle power usage, such as when it is sitting unused on a desk. Google is claiming two times longer idle battery life on the Nexus 9 using Doze.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Techwolf on Saturday May 30 2015, @09:21PM

    by Techwolf (87) on Saturday May 30 2015, @09:21PM (#190219)

    "all of a user's autofill data, passwords, and cache are available when they open links within that application."

    Hmm...If I am interpreting that right, it means that clicking a link will allow a app to have all that data to send to the mothership. What I am thinking is this: Click on a link, banking page is presented with all fields pre-filled out, use an ajax trick to send all that data to the mothership without any user interaction.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2015, @10:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2015, @10:40PM (#190237)

    Sounds like all that is already a risk whenever an app uses a webview. This just lets the app specify the UI of the browser tab rather than have it look like all other browser tabs.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2015, @02:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2015, @02:18AM (#190284)

    It's the other way around - all the data already available (and perhaps synced) in your Chrome browser, will be usable within that tab within the app. It's probably not that the app will be able to access said data, and certainly not any new data sent to Google (aside from "user xyz used the tab in app A to login with credentials stored in chrome" and probably usage patterns, which google would probably get if you were using the smae site in Chrome anyway).