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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.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday May 30 2015, @11:40PM
Apple solved the problem of targetting multiple instruction set architectures back in the mid-90s.
They also have supported multiple releases of one ISA in the same binary for quite a long time.
I'm not pointing out that Apple is better, rather that this has been a solved problem for well over twenty years. Perhaps our friends at google should Read The Fine Manual.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by M. Baranczak on Sunday May 31 2015, @12:00AM
Targeting multiple instruction sets is something that Android has always supported. Most applications are written in interpreted bytecode, so they don't care at all about the ISA. If you're using native code, you can include binaries for different ISAs in one application.
Different OS versions is a much harder problem. But I agree, they could have found a better way to solve it.