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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On the heels of Microsoft bashing Google's hands-off Android update policy at Ignite 2015, Lucian Armasu at Tom's Hardware has an editorial reaffirming Android's update woes:
Android 5.0 and Android 5.1 (Lollipop) [...] currently represent 9.0 percent and 0.7 percent of the Android market, respectively, for a combined total of 9.7 percent. That's definitely nothing to be proud about, because it could be years by the time the vast majority of users are on the Android 5+ platforms. By then, 10 percent of users could be on Android 8.0.
Because Android is open source and because so many (essentially) OEM-tweaked "forks" of it exist, a "clean" upgrade path is almost impossible. To have a clean standardized update system would mean all the OEMs would have to agree to abide strictly by Google's guidelines for what they can and cannot modify on the platform. However, as soon as Google tries to do something like that, the OEMs usually cry foul that Google is making Android more proprietary and restricting what they can do with it. Google may also not want to upset the OEMs too much by forcing a unified update system on them either, because of the fear that those OEMs could take their business elsewhere, as it were.
When we look at the matter practically, though, we see that some have already tried that (Samsung with Tizen), and it hasn't worked very well. The reality is that Android and iOS are so entrenched in the market right now that it's hard to believe a significant third platform could arise on mobile when it comes to apps. Even Microsoft, after spending billions upon billions trying to make Windows Phone popular, has essentially admitted failure on the app store front, and is now trying to make Android and iOS apps work with Windows instead.
Google also can't and shouldn't leave the responsibility to OEMs and carriers anymore, because so far they've proven themselves to be quite irresponsible from this point of view. At best, we see flagship smartphones being updated for a year and a half, and even that is less than the time most people keep their phones. Even worse, the highest volume phones (lower-end handsets) usually never get an update. If they do it's only one update, and it comes about a year after Google released that update to other phones, giving malicious attackers plenty of time to take advantage of those users.
This update "system," if you can call it that, ends up leaving the vast majority of Android users with security holes in their phones and without the ability to experience new features until they buy new phones (which is sadly a kind of planned obsolescence as well). This can't be an acceptable state of affairs for Google, and it shouldn't be. Google already has a great six-week update system for Chromebooks, and it's time to have Android catch up to that, as well.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday May 30 2015, @08:54PM
Yes, the permissions thing is a good idea that should have been part of Android all along. But introducing it now is problematic. As an app developer, I can't just target Asteroid M with this new functionality, because it will be years/decades/never before this thing is available to many people. A lot of devices never get updated. So what do I do? Release multiple versions of the same app, one targeting old devices and one targeting new ones? Cut off users of anything other than this new version? You can't put multiple versions of the same app in the same Google Play store and keep your reviews/star rating/feedback. Google solved one problem by introducing a bigger one. There is no way to handle backwards compatibility gracefully that I can see. I'm still supporting Android 4.0 because so many devices are pre-4.4. With some feature, not all, you can do awful if-statement programming to see if the feature is available (hello, Chromecast!) but this is a bad hack, too. With something like this, which depends on the manifest, you can't even do that. Unless there's something I've missed.
Fortunately, I have Yoda-like powers to see into the future! Next year, Android N (version 38 if they do a Chrome-like increment) will have a way to target multiple releases in the same binary.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2015, @09:21PM
I'm still running 2.3 on my phone. Though it is Cyanogen so I can block app permissions at-will. (And block ads too.)
(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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Sunday May 31 2015, @04:48AM
"Fortunately, I have Yoda-like powers to see into the future! Next year, Android N (version 38 if they do a Chrome-like increment) will have a way to target multiple releases in the same binary."
You wish...Only, given the weird mindset at Google the last year, I doubt you will find anything rational coming out of Google. From what I see coming from Google either the entire management team at Google is on a huge Ecstasy binge, or Apple has sent in a 5th Column of programmers to wreck the whole company.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2015, @10:15PM
Some install a M ready app on a older Android, they get the same permissions list as always.
And you can check what version of Android the app is running on, so if you are running on something older than M assume you have the permissions you put in the manifest.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 01 2015, @06:33PM
What makes you think this won't *already* work on existing apps without any change? What makes you think if the apps *are* changed, that they won't be backwards-compatible?
Cyanogenmod already has this feature. It's been there for *years*, and works perfectly fine with the existing apps in the play store. Perhaps if you've coded your app incredibly poorly and it responds to a null value (or whatever this gives) by crashing or shutting down, then it'll be a problem. But I've never encountered a single app that behaved this way. It should just work, with zero developer input required.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2015, @10:36AM
Get an F-droid fork going that supports paid-for apps?
It already has support for handling 'compatible' versions of the same app. Not sure about review support, since I have never had a need for it, but it could certainly be added if there was demand.
Show google what they need to add in their own marketplace by making a competitor!
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Saturday May 30 2015, @09:18PM
If Android M will be faster, smaller, use less battery life, allow me to disable just about all of the Google-centric BS, and be less buggy than KitKat
then I will consider installing it.
Else
I'll continue running KitKat until my PDA with voice modem stops working.
Given the total resounding success of Lollypop, I think that I'm going for the "else" up there.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Techwolf on Saturday May 30 2015, @09:21PM
"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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2015, @10:40PM
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
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).
(Score: 5, Informative) by Appalbarry on Saturday May 30 2015, @09:28PM
My girlfriend is still using XP because "upgrades always break things."
She's right. Except for my Linux box, which actually seems to upgrade things AND make them better, I can't recall an upgrade in years that didn't screw up some perfectly good feature.
Phones, computers, TVs.... I've seen all of them knackered by an upgrade.
But Google is the worst. I can't recall a Google product that is as usable as it was three years ago. Any number of core Google services are THAT close to being abandoned because they have eliminated some feature that I use, or have been changed in enough inexplicable ways that I can't be bothered.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Saturday May 30 2015, @11:44PM
Given all the fuss about systemd, I'd say a lot of people would include Linux in that list.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by everdred on Monday June 01 2015, @02:38PM
And I'd add Gnome 3.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday May 30 2015, @09:53PM
quite commonly I want to accomplish a task when I am prompted to click a button. It would be OK if there were some way that I could make my choice of button stick, but also quite commonly that alert is shown again and again.
For example my first-gen iPhone - yes, really - is no longer able to communicate with a data service, not because the phone doesn't support it but I expect because the carriers no longer provide the gear in their towers. So I am endlessly being notified of that fact, it really gets on my nerves.
Even so I still use my first-gen iPhone because I like its retro look. Kinda like my dad used to restore antique cars.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Saturday May 30 2015, @11:49PM
But regarding permissions, the iPhone does it right, and is clearly what Android are copying here. At run time the first time an app requests a restricted resource, the user is asked for permission, but they aren't asked again. If the user wants to change the answer they go to the system settings to change it.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday May 30 2015, @10:27PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday May 31 2015, @05:14AM
huh...at least with MS I have the option to let them tell me when there is an update available. Then I can choose when and if to install it. Google offers nothing like that in Chrome. If one of their updates breaks something, there is no way to uninstall it or even know what nor when it was installed.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2015, @10:19PM
Only way for that to happen is for Google to introduce a whole new driver architecture for Linux.
Windows driver APIs were basically the same between somewhere around NT3 until Vista, and again has been since Vista.
Though Google may actually be working on that as part of Project Ara.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by quacking duck on Sunday May 31 2015, @04:13PM
There's obvious back and forth copying of features between the various mobile OSes, so it is unbelievable, even inexcusable, that it's taken Google this long to officially release an obviously superior app permission model for Android that iOS and Blackberry before it have had for years.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Sunday May 31 2015, @07:43PM
Android M? Where's the fun and sugary moniker? Can't be for lack of options, because there's Marzipan, Marshmallows and Milkduds just off the top of my head.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2015, @07:17PM
It'll come. They are just not ready to announce the name yet. Personally I'm hoping for another brand tie-in this time with Malteasers.