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Google Releases Android N Developer Preview 2 35

Posted by msmash from the new-android-builds dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Google on Wednesday released the second developer preview of Android N. The update, which comes a month after the release of first Android N developer preview, brings with it a number of features and improvements. On a blog post, Google wrote that it is adding Vulkan, a low-overhead graphics API to the package. This would supposedly offload some CPU-bound processes to GPU. Also in the build are new "human-looking" emojis. Improvements can be found here.
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Google Releases Android N Developer Preview 2 More

Google Releases Android N Developer Preview 2

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  • So we've got "Vulkan is a new 3D rendering API", something I'd consider part of a normal update for an OS. A point or two later I read "[w]e are introducing a new emoji design for people emoji that moves away from our generic look".

    I am amazed that these two updates would be applied to the same infrastructure.

  • Seriously. The simple yellow circle with expressions are perfect because the are nonspecific and can be assumed to apply to everyone.

    Now we are adding skin tone... Why? That just opens the door to people complaining about hair color, hair style, eye color, face shape and a ton of other things.
    Where is the identical set of emojis for people wearing an eye patch. Left or right eye? Scars? Bald people? Glasses? People who lost their noses in tragic plastic surgery incidents?

    They have family emojis. Where

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This is progress. Soon we'll all have our own emojis, and the massive amount of data involved will improve server and server hard drive sales.

    • Exactly. Congrats, designers, your emoji have now crossed into the uncanny valley, with all the negative ramifications thereof. Some of them still retain the traditional yellow color but now have noses, hair, clothes, etc, and it just looks creepy, like watered-down Simpsons characters designed not to cause any offense. Others are colored more "realistically", and now look like drawings from a child's picture book, and rather bland ones at that.

      Not that this is worth getting irritated or worried about...

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That just opens the door to people complaining

      That seems like a pretty good justification for never doing anything. Seriously who cares? Let them complain ... just like you are right now. If they do nothing somebody complains, if they do something somebody complains.

      Specificity is not always helpful.

      And sometimes it is, if you don't need it then just use the simple yellow ones.

  • I'm an Android guy who whines about it often, being a fan doesn't mean you think things are infallible.
    So with that said:

    I've been using this OS for over 5 years now, is it even possible at this point to improve the 'backend' core code? The UI continues to be, mildly sluggish in some situations, even on modern hardware.
    I read an article years ago, that Apple 'cheats' with speed stuff, in clever ways. One example, when you quit an app, it takes a silent screenshot of the app. Next time you re-open that ap

    • I feel like Google is focusing on stupid shit now (emojis) rather than important stuff. The days of clever innovation seem gone.

      I don't they are "focussing" on it, it was probably something they needed/wanted to get done so it got done. I doubt what you see in this preview release is the culmination of all of the work that has been going on for Android, it's just a small subset, the few things that were ready to go.

      • I feel like Google is focusing on stupid shit now (emojis) rather than important stuff. The days of clever innovation seem gone.

        I don't they are "focussing" on it, it was probably something they needed/wanted to get done so it got done. I doubt what you see in this preview release is the culmination of all of the work that has been going on for Android, it's just a small subset, the few things that were ready to go.

        Yeah unfortunately this is something that needs doing - much as it seems trivial, the problem is that Android has to interact with other OS that have already done the thing... I have written a couple of apps with messaging for Android and they both have to have a bit of code that strips out the Apple skin colour unicode characters because Android doesn't support them and they render as ugly blank characters.

    • I've been using this OS for over 5 years now, is it even possible at this point to improve the 'backend' core code?.

      Yeah, I think this is the central thing now - for all the mobile OSs actually, they've picked their path and we're mostly stuck with what we've got. It's mature so increasingly tiny incremental improvements is the order of the day, you can't really have the big changes like you used to because of the legacy of backwards compatibility and architectural stiffness. Maybe that's for the best, to get high-quality apps you need the technology to move at a sensibly slow pace so that the developers can properly und

      • I'm not sure I agree with your last sentence. We've been able to do a massive amount of things on Android for years. I don't feel like a huge amount has been added.

        iOS has some stuff which is frustratingly good, I've used the 3D touch sensor on a 6S, it's fantastic. Android needs this, now. It's brilliant - even more useful on iOS though (because those poor bastards don't have a menu / context button)
        Charge time and battery life is mind blowingly good on Apple devices, admitedly a hardware thing but man

  • The latest update has broken even more apps. Already things like Skype or anything that used audio functions, had stopped working. Now various other things have stopped, only spitting out error messages that cover the screen.

    I'm about ready to erase the phone and go back to Marshmallow.

  • Bluetooth LE is broken, taking a photo in portrait is broken, I mean WTF

    Some 3rd party Android nightlies where messy, but this easily beats everything so far. At least they were frequent and easily revertible if needed.

    Trying to load the factory images is broken as well if you did not already unlock your bootloader, because unlocking you bootloader is broken as well.

    Really Google... WTF

  • And yet, there is still no effort on Android's part to fix IPv6 so it's usable for companies.

    https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=32621

    This has existed for FOUR YEARS. There are numerous highly rated rants on youtube about this issue. Google doesn't fix it on the simple basis that it doesn't "fit their ecosystem". They're basically pulling a Microsoft here.

    I mean, shit. Human like emojis?

    Fuck you, Google.

    I can't wait until Tizen or something else becomes available. Maybe I'll get a land line.

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