Google Releases Android 4.2 SDK, Wants Developer Community to Dive Right In
The team over at Mountain View has had a busy day and they’re not slowing down yet. The Android Developers team just posted the Android 4.2 SDK on their blog in an effort to encourage the developer community to dive right into the 4.2 goods.
Developers will want to take advantage of the newly unleashed SDK to ensure their apps will showcase all of the update’s latest features. If you aren’t familiar yet with what Android 4.2 has to offer, here are some of the highlights below as taken from the Android Developers Blog.
Performance
We’ve worked with our partners to run Renderscript computation directly in the GPU on the Nexus 10, a first for any mobile computation platform.
New ways to engage users
Users can now place interactive lock screen widgets directly on their device lock screens, for instant access to favorite apps and content. With just a small update, you can adapt any app widget to run on the lock screen. Daydream is an interactive screensaver mode that users can encounter when their devices are charging or docked in a desk dock. You can create interactive daydreams that users display in this mode, and they can include any type of content.
New interaction and entertainment experiences
Android 4.2 introduces platform support for external displays that goes beyond mirroring. Your apps can now target unique content to any number of displays attached to an Android device.
Enhancements for international users
To help you create better apps for users in languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian, Android 4.2 includes native RTL support, including layout mirroring. With native RTL support, you can deliver the same great app experience to all of your users with minimal extra work. Android 4.2 also includes a variety of font and character optimizations for Korean, Japanese, Indic, Thai, Arabic and Hebrew writing systems.
