5 tips for indie game success, from indie game developers

Posted by Sarah Thomson, BD Partnerships Lead, Indies, Google Play Games



Mobile gaming is a fun place to be right now. It's a landscape seeing tremendous success year after year with great potential for additional growth and innovation. It's also a space where developers can express themselves with creative game styles, mechanics, design and more. This is what the indie community does best.



Here are 5 tips for indies by indies, shared by our gaming partners at 505 Games, About Fun, Disruptor Beam, Klei Entertainment, and Schell Games.

1. Embrace being indie

Indies are inherently smaller operations and should embrace their agility and ability to take risks. Petr Vodak, CEO at About Fun, recommends getting your product out there so you can start taking feedback and apply your learnings to future projects. Don't be afraid to fail! Remaining flexible and building in modularity so you can evolve with the business needs is a strategy embraced by Pete Arden, CMO at Disruptor Beam. For instance, with their game Star Trek Timelines, the initial user experience was tailored to avid Star Trek fans. Over time, as user acquisition costs increased, they've changed the new player experience to appeal to their evolving user base of gamers looking for a fun entertainment experience and less the specific Star Trek IP.

2. Find a way to stand out

To help stand out in the ultra competitive mobile space, Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games, recommends doing something clever or very different. This strategy has led them to explore the growth areas of new platforms such as AR & VR. While new platforms present a field for opportunity and creativity, they're best to be approached with the long term in mind allowing you to sustain the business until critical mass is reached.

3. Build a community

There are many ways to build communities. If you have an existing fan base on other platforms, cross-promote to drive awareness of your mobile offerings. You can also look at porting titles over, but be aware of the differences in mobile gaming habits and ensure you adapt your game accordingly.

4. Engage after install

Both 505 Games and Klei Entertainment recommend running your premium titles as a service. Through monitoring user reviews you can gain invaluable feedback and trends helping you better understand user pain points and desires. In addition, by releasing regular content updates and in-game events you create reason for users to get back in the game. This not only drives reengagement, but 505 Games also sees strong spikes in new installs aligned with major game updates.

5. Monetize in different ways

Similar strategy to above, dropping regular content refreshes and game updates while offering a variety of monetization options gives users more ways to engage with your game. Keeping your games fresh gives users reason to come back and builds loyalty so you can cross-promote to your users with future game launches.



If you're looking for a fun new game to play, check out the great selection on Indie Corner on Google Play. And if you're working on a new indie game of your own, nominate your title for inclusion.



Watch more sessions from Google Developer Day at GDC17 on the Android Developers YouTube channel to learn tips for success. Visit the Android Developers website to stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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Update your app to take advantage of the larger aspect ratio on new Android flagship devices

Posted by Neto Marin, Developer Advocate, Google Play



To deliver more engaging viewing experiences to their users, many Android OEMs
are experimenting with new, super widescreen smartphones. Samsung has just
announced a new flagship device, the Samsung Galaxy S8, featuring a new
display format with an aspect ratio of 18.5:9. At the Mobile World Congress
earlier this year, Xiaomi and LG also launched their new flagship devices, the Mi Mix (launched October 2016) and the LG G6 respectively, with an expanded screen aspect ratio of
18:9.

(Left) An app with a maximum aspect ratio set at 16:9 on an 18.5:9 device 

(Right) An app with a maximum aspect ratio set at or over 18.5:9 on an 18.5:9
device

In order to take full advantage of the larger display formats on these devices,
you should consider increasing your app's maximum supported aspect ratio. To do
so, simply declare an android.max_aspect <meta-data> element in the app's <application> element:

<meta-data android:name="android.max_aspect"
    android:value="ratio_float"/>

Where ratio_float is the maximum aspect ratio your app can support, expressed as (longer dimension /
shorter dimension) in decimal form.




We recommend that you design your app to support aspect ratios of 2.1 or higher.
For this, you would add the following to the <application> element:

<meta-data android:name="android.max_aspect" android:value="2.1" />

Note: if you don't set a value, and android:resizeableActivity
is not true, then the maximum aspect ratio defaults to 1.86 (roughly 16:9) and
your app will not take advantage of the extra screen space.



As more super widescreen Android devices, like the Samsung Galaxy S8, Mi Mix, and the LG G6 become available, you'll have more opportunities to display more content and create more engaging experiences with your app.







For more details about how to support multiple screens on Android, please visit the page Supporting Multiple Screens.

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Calling all early adopters for Android Studio previews

Posted by Scott Main, Technical Writer

If you love trying out all of the newest features in Android Studio and helping us make it a better IDE, we're making it even easier to download early preview builds with a new website. Here, you can download and stay up to date on all the latest Android Studio previews and other tools announcements.

Android Studio previews give you early access to new features in all aspects of the IDE, plus early versions of other tools such as the Android Emulator and platform SDK previews. You can install multiple versions of Android Studio side-by-side, so if a bug in the preview build blocks your app development, you can keep working on the same project from the stable version.



The latest preview for Android Studio 2.4 just came out last week, and it includes new features to support development with the Android O Developer Preview. You can download and set up the O preview SDK from inside Android Studio, and then use Android O’s XML font resources and autosizing TextView in the Layout Editor.



By building your apps with the Android Studio preview, you're also helping us create a better version of Android Studio. We want to hear from you if you encounter any bugs.

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5 tips for building communities on mobile

Posted by Dave Geffon, Partnerships Manager, Google Play Games



The most successful games usually have the strongest communities. They are a powerful force in driving additional engagement and increasing awareness for your titles. At GDC 2017, we spoke with a few game developers about best practices for successfully building their own communities. Watch the panel session below to hear advice from Seriously, Social Point, and Super Evil MegaCorp.

1. Be authentic

Community is a mindset; be honest, transparent & patient with your communications. Loyal users are extremely valuable, thus the folks at Super Evil Megacorp say that you should act like you have to earn every player.



2. Start small

Build a plan and start today. Launch your social media channels, look into influencers, and create a strategy. Whether it's sharing one piece of fan art a week across your network, or running a closed beta to gather feedback from your most valued users, take action and learn what works best for you and your users.

3. Play match-maker

When finding influencers to support your game, ensure they're a genuine match. Make sure the influencer's audience is a good fit with your game and existing community.

4. Seek feedback 

Communities are passionate. Use feedback to understand what kind of game and features your users want. Be flexible and iterative so you can react and evolve your game with the needs and desires of your community. However, don't be afraid to stay true to what you stand for as sometimes you'll need to agree to disagree with some players.

5. Build for the long-term

The lifespan of games is continuing to grow. Plan your business strategy, update cycles and community efforts to roll out over time and expand with your growing experiences and user-base.

Watch more sessions from Google Developer Day at GDC17 on the Android Developers YT channel to learn tips for success. Also, visit the Android Developers website to stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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5 tips for launching successful apps and games on Google Play

Posted by Adam Gutterman, Go-To-Market Strategic Lead, Google Play Games



Last month at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), we held a developer panel focused on sharing best practices for building successful app and game businesses. Check out 5 tips for developers, both large and small, as shared by our gaming partners at Electronic Arts (EA), Hutch Games, Nix Hydra, Space Ape Games and Omnidrone.

1. Test, test, test

The best time to test, is before you launch; so test boldly and test a lot! Nix Hydra recommends testing creative, including art style and messaging, as well as gameplay mechanics, onboarding flows and anything else you're not sure about. Gathering feedback from real users in advance of launching can highlight what's working and what can be improved to ensure your game's in the best shape possible at launch.

2. Store listing experiments

Run experiments on all of your store listing page assets. Taking bold risks instead of making assumptions allows you to see the impact of different variables with your actual user base on Google Play. Test in different regions to ensure your store listing page is optimized for each major market, as they often perform differently.



3. Early Access program



Space Ape Games recently used Early Access to test different onboarding experiences and gameplay control methods in their game. Finding the right combination led them to double-digit growth in D1 retention. Gathering these results in advance of launch helped the team fine tune and polish the game, minimizing risk before releasing to the masses.

"Early Access is cool because you can ask the big questions and get real answers from real players," Joe Raeburn, Founding Product Guy at Space Ape Games.

Watch the Android Developer Story below to hear how Omnidrone benefits from Early Access using strong user feedback to improve retention, engagement and monetization in their game.

Mobile game developer Omnidrone benefits from Early Access.

4. Pre-registration



Electronic Arts has run more than 5 pre-registration campaigns on Google Play. Pre-registration allows them to start marketing and build awareness for titles with a clear call-to-action before launch. This gives them a running start on launch day having built a group of users to activate upon the game's release resulting in a jump in D1 installs.



5. Seek feedback



All partners strongly recommended seeking feedback early and often. Feedback tells both sides of the story, by pointing out what's broken as well as what you're doing right. Find the right time and channels to request feedback, whether they be in-game, social, email, or even through reading and responding to reviews within the Google Play store.



If you're a startup who has an upcoming launch on Google Play or has launched an app or game recently and you're interested in opportunities like Early Access and pre-registration, get in touch with us so we can work with you.



Watch sessions from Google Developer Day at GDC17 on the Android Developers YT channel to learn tips for success. Also, visit the Android Developers website to stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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Diverse protections for a diverse ecosystem: Android Security 2016 Year in Review

Posted by Adrian Ludwig & Mel Miller, Android Security Team

Today, we're sharing the third annual Android Security Year In Review, a
comprehensive look at our work to protect more than 1.4 billion Android users
and their data.




Our goal is simple: keep our users safe. In 2016, we improved our abilities to
stop dangerous apps, built new security features into Android 7.0 Nougat, and
collaborated with device manufacturers, researchers, and other members of the
Android ecosystem. For more details, you can read the full
Year in Review report or watch our
webinar.

Protecting you from PHAs

It's critical to keep people safe from Potentially
Harmful Apps (PHAs) that may put their data or devices at risk. Our ongoing
work in this area requires us to find ways to track and stop existing PHAs, and
anticipate new ones that haven't even emerged yet.

Over the years, we've built a variety of systems to address these threats, such
as application analyzers that constantly review apps for unsafe behavior, and
Verify Apps which regularly checks users' devices for PHAs. When these systems
detect PHAs, we warn users, suggest they think twice about downloading a
particular app, or even remove the app from their devices entirely.



We constantly monitor threats and improve our systems over time. Last year's
data reflected those improvements: Verify Apps conducted 750 million daily
checks in 2016, up from 450 million the previous year, enabling us to reduce the
PHA installation rate in the top 50 countries for Android usage.




Google Play continues to be the safest place for Android users to download their
apps. Installs of PHAs from Google Play decreased in nearly every category:

• Now 0.016 percent of installs, trojans dropped by 51.5 percent compared to
  2015
  


• Now 0.003 percent of installs, hostile downloaders dropped by 54.6 percent
  compared to 2015
  


• Now 0.003 percent of installs, backdoors dropped by 30.5 percent compared to
  2015
  


• Now 0.0018 percent of installs, phishing apps dropped by 73.4 percent
  compared to 2015

By the end of 2016, only 0.05 percent of devices that downloaded apps
exclusively from Play contained a PHA; down from 0.15 percent in 2015.




Still, there's more work to do for devices overall, especially those that
install apps from multiple sources. While only 0.71 percent of all Android
devices had PHAs installed at the end of 2016, that was a slight increase from
about 0.5 percent in the beginning of 2015. Using improved tools and the
knowledge we gained in 2016, we think we can reduce the number of devices
affected by PHAs in 2017, no matter where people get their apps.

New security protections in Nougat

Last year, we introduced a
variety of new protections in Nougat, and continued our ongoing work to strengthen
the security of the Linux Kernel.

• Encryption improvements: In Nougat, we introduced
  file-based encryption which enables each user profile on a single device to be
  encrypted with a unique key. If you have personal and work accounts on the same
  device, for example, the key from one account can't unlock data from the other.
  More broadly, encryption of user data has been required for capable Android
  devices since in late 2014, and we now see that feature enabled on over 80
  percent of Android Nougat devices.
  


• New audio and video protections: We did significant work to
  improve
  security and re-architect how Android handles video and audio media. One
  example: We now store different media components into individual sandboxes,
  where previously they lived together. Now if one component is compromised, it
  doesn't automatically have permissions to other components, which helps contain
  any additional issues.
  


• Even more security for enterprise users: We introduced a variety
  of new enterprise security features including "Always On" VPN, which
  protects your data from the moment your device boots up and ensures it isn't
  traveling from a work phone to your personal device via an insecure connection.
  We also added security policy transparency, process logging, improved wifi
  certification handling, and client certification improvements to our growing set of enterprise
  tools.

Working together to secure the Android ecosystem

Sharing information about security threats between Google, device manufacturers,
the research community, and others helps keep all Android users safer. In 2016,
our biggest collaborations were our monthly security updates program and ongoing
partnership with the security research community.




Security updates are regularly highlighted as a pillar of mobile security—and
rightly so. We launched
our monthly security updates program in 2015, following the public
disclosure of a bug in Stagefright, to help accelerate patching security
vulnerabilities across devices from many different device makers. This program
expanded significantly in 2016:

• More than 735 million devices from 200+ manufacturers received a platform
  security update in 2016.
  


• We released monthly Android security updates throughout the year for devices
  running Android 4.4.4 and up—that accounts for 86.3 percent of all active
  Android devices worldwide.
  


• Our carrier and hardware partners helped expand deployment of these updates,
  releasing updates for over half of the top 50 devices worldwide in the last
  quarter of 2016.

We provided monthly security updates for all supported Pixel and Nexus devices
throughout 2016, and we're thrilled to see our partners invest significantly in
regular updates as well. There's still a lot of room for improvement however.
About half of devices in use at the end of 2016 had not received a platform
security update in the previous year. We're working to increase device security
updates by streamlining our security update program to make it easier for
manufacturers to deploy security patches and releasing A/B
updates to make it easier for users to apply those patches.




On the research side, our Android Security Rewards program grew rapidly: we paid
researchers nearly $1 million dollars for their reports in 2016. In
parallel, we worked closely with various security firms to identify and quickly
fix issues that may have posed risks to our users.




We appreciate all of the hard work by Android partners, external researchers,
and teams at Google that led to the progress the ecosystem has made with
security in 2016. But it doesn't stop there. Keeping you safe requires constant
vigilance and effort. We're looking forward to new insights and progress in 2017
and beyond.

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O-MG, the Developer Preview of Android O is here!

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Since the first launch in 2008, the Android project has thrived on the incredible feedback from our vibrant ecosystems of app developers and device makers, as well as of course our users. More recently, we've been pushing hard on improving our engineering processes so we can share our work earlier and more openly with our partners.

So, today, I'm excited to share a first href="http://developer.android.com/preview">developer preview of the next version of the OS: Android O. The usual caveats apply: it's early days, there are more features coming, and there's still plenty of stabilization and performance work ahead of us. But it's booting :).

Over the course of the next several months, we'll be releasing updated developer previews, and we'll be doing a deep dive on all things Android at href="https://events.google.com/io/">Google I/O in May. In the meantime, we'd love your feedback on trying out new features, and of course testing your apps on the new OS.

What's new in O?

Android O introduces a number of new features and APIs to use in your apps. Here's are just a few new things for you to start trying in this first Developer Preview:

Background limits: Building on the work we began in Nougat, Android O puts a big priority on improving a user's battery life and the device's interactive performance. To make this possible, we've put additional automatic limits on what apps can do in the background, in three main areas: implicit broadcasts, background services, and location updates. These changes will make it easier to create apps that have minimal impact on a user's device and battery. Background limits represent a significant change in Android, so we want every developer to get familiar with them. Check out the documentation on href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/background.html">background execution limits and href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/background-location-limits.html">background location limits for details.

Notification channels: Android O also introduces href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/notification-channels.html">notification channels, which are new app-defined categories for notification content. Channels let developers give users fine-grained control over different kinds of notifications — users can block or change the behavior of each channel individually, rather than managing all of the app's notifications together.

Notification channels let users control your app's notification categories

Android O also adds new visuals and grouping to notifications that make it easier for users to see what's going on when they have an incoming message or are glancing at the notification shade.

Autofill APIs: Android users already depend on a range of password managers to autofill login details and repetitive information, which makes setting up new apps or placing transactions easier. Now we are making this work more easily across the ecosystem by adding platform support for autofill. Users can select an autofill app, similar to the way they select a keyboard app. The autofill app stores and secures user data, such as addresses, user names, and even passwords. For apps that want to handle autofill, we're href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/autofill.html">adding new APIs to implement an Autofill service.

PIP for handsets and new windowing features: href="https://developer.android.com/preview/api-overview.html#opip">Picture in Picture (PIP) display is now available on phones and tablets, so users can continue watching a video while they're answering a chat or hailing a car. Apps can put themselves in PiP mode from the resumed or a pausing state where the system supports it - and you can specify the aspect ratio and a set of custom interactions (such as play/pause). Other new windowing features include a href="https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior-changes.html?#cwt">new app overlay window for apps to use instead of system alert window, and href="https://developer.android.com/preview/api-overview.html#mds">multi-display support for launching an activity on a remote display.

Font resources in XML: href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/working-with-fonts.html">Fonts are now a fully supported resource type in Android O. Apps can now use fonts in XML layouts as well as define font families in XML — declaring the font style and weight along with the font files.

Adaptive icons: To help you integrate better with the device UI, you can now create href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/adaptive-icons.html"> adaptive icons that the system displays in different shapes, based on a mask selected by the device. The system also animates interactions with the icons, and uses them in the launcher, shortcuts, Settings, sharing dialogs, and in the overview screen.

Adaptive icons display in a variety of shapes across different device models.

Wide-gamut color for apps: Android developers of imaging apps can now take advantage of new devices that have a wide-gamut color capable display. To display wide gamut images, apps will need to enable a flag in their manifest (per activity) and load bitmaps with an embedded wide color profile (AdobeRGB, Pro Photo RGB, DCI-P3, etc.).

Connectivity: For the ultimate in audio fidelity, Android O now also supports high-quality Bluetooth audio codecs such as href="https://www.sony.net/Products/LDAC/">LDAC codec. We're also adding new Wi-Fi features as well, like Wi-Fi Aware, previously known as Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN). On devices with the appropriate hardware, apps and nearby devices can discover and communicate over Wi-Fi without an Internet access point. We're working with our hardware partners to bring Wi-Fi Aware technology to devices as soon as possible.

The Telecom framework is extending ConnectionService APIs to enable third party calling apps integrate with System UI and operate seamlessly with other audio apps. For instance, apps can have their calls displayed and controlled in different kinds of UIs such as car head units.

Keyboard navigation: With the advent of Google Play apps on Chrome OS and other large form factors, we're seeing a resurgence of keyboard navigation use within these apps. In Android O we focused on building a more reliable, predictable model for "arrow" and "tab" navigation that aids both developers and end users.

AAudio API for Pro Audio: AAudio is a new native API that's designed specifically for apps that require high-performance, low-latency audio. Apps using AAudio read and write data via streams. In the Developer Preview we're releasing an early version of this new API to get your feedback.

WebView enhancements: In Android Nougat we introduced an optional multiprocess mode for WebView that moved the handling of web content into an isolated process. In Android O, we're enabling multiprocess mode by default and adding an href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/managing-webview.html">API to let your app handle errors and crashes, for enhanced security and improved app stability. As a further security measure, you can now opt in your app's WebView objects to href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/managing-webview.html#gsb">verify URLs through Google Safe Browsing.

Java 8 Language APIs and runtime optimizations: Android now supports several new Java Language APIs, including the new java.time API. In addition, the Android Runtime is faster than ever before, with improvements of up to 2x on some application benchmarks.

Partner platform contributions: Hardware manufacturers and silicon partners have accelerated fixes and enhancements to the Android platform in the O release. For example, Sony has contributed more than 30 feature enhancements including the href="https://www.sony.net/Products/LDAC/">LDAC codec and 250 bug fixes to Android O.

Get started in a few simple steps

First, make your app compatible to give your users a seamless transition to Android O. Just download a href="https://developer.android.com/preview/download.html">device system image or emulator system image, install your current app, and test -- the app should run and look great, and handle href="https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior-changes.html">behavior changes properly. After you've made any necessary updates, we recommend publishing to Google Play right away without changing the app's platform targeting.

Building with Android O

When you're ready, dive in to O in depth to learn about everything you can take advantage of for your app. Visit the href="https://developer.android.com/preview/index.html">O Developer Preview site for details on the href="https://developer.android.com/preview/overview.html">preview timeline, href="https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior-changes.html">behavior changes, href="https://developer.android.com/preview/api-overview.html">new APIs, and href="https://developer.android.com/preview/feedback.html">support resources.

Plan how your app will support href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/background.html">background limits and href="https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior-changes.html#o-apps">other changes. Try out some of the great new features in your app -- href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/notification-channels.html">notification channels, href="https://developer.android.com/preview/api-overview.html#opip">PIP, href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/adaptive-icons.html">adaptive icons, href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/working-with-fonts.html">font resources in XML, href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/autosizing-textview.html">autosizing TextView, and href="https://developer.android.com/preview/api-overview.html">many others. To make it easier to explore the new APIs in Android O, we've brought the href="https://developer.android.com/sdk/api_diff/o-dp1/changes.html">API diff report online, along with the href="https://developer.android.com/reference/packages.html">Android O API reference.

The latest canary version of href="https://developer.android.com/studio/preview/">Android Studio 2.4 includes new features to help you get started with Android O. You can download and set up the O preview SDK from inside Android Studio, then use Android O's href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/working-with-fonts.html">XML font resources and href="https://developer.android.com/preview/features/autosizing-textview.html">autosizing TextView in the Layout Editor. Watch for more Android O support coming in the weeks ahead.

We're also releasing an href="https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/support-library/revisions.html">alpha version of the 26.0.0 support library for you to try. This version adds a number of new APIs and increases the minSdkversion to 14. Check out the release notes for details.

Preview updates

The O Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with system images for testing on the official Android Emulator and on Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel, Pixel XL and Pixel C devices. If you're building for wearables, there's also an emulator for testing Android Wear 2.0 on Android O.

We plan to update the preview system images and SDK regularly throughout the O Developer Preview. This initial preview release is for developers only and not intended for daily or consumer use, so we're making it available by manual download and flash only. href="https://developer.android.com/preview/download.html">Downloads and instructions are here.

As we get closer to a final product, we'll be inviting consumers to try it out as well, and we'll open up enrollments through Android Beta at that time. Stay tuned for details, but for now please note that Android Beta is not currently available for Android O.

Give us your feedback

As always, your feedback is crucial, so please href="https://developer.android.com/preview/feedback.html">let us know what you think — the sooner we hear from you, the more of your feedback we can integrate. When you find issues, please href="https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=190602&template=809005">report them here. We've moved to a more robust tool, href="https://issuetracker.google.com">Issue Tracker, which is also used internally at Google to track bugs and feature requests during product development. We hope you'll find it href="https://developers.google.com/issue-tracker/">easier to use.

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Introducing Android Native Development Kit r14

Posted by Dan Albert, Android NDK Tech Lead

Android NDK r14

The latest version of the Android Native Development Kit (NDK), Android NDK r14,
is now available for download. It
is also available in the SDK manager via Android Studio.



So what's new in r14? The full changelog can be seen here, but the
highlights include the following:

• Updated all the platform headers to unified headers (covered in detail
  below)
  


• LTO with Clang now works on Darwin and Linux
  


• libc++ has been updated. You can now use thread_local for statics with
  non-trivial destructors (Clang only)
  


• RenderScript is back!

Unified Headers

We've completely redone how we ship platform header files in the NDK. Rather
than having one set of headers for every target API level, there's now a single
set of headers. The availability of APIs for each Android platform is guarded in
these headers by #if __ANDROID_API__ >= __ANDROID_API_FOO__ preprocessor
directives.




The prior approach relied on periodically-captured snapshots of the platform
headers. This meant that any time we fixed a header-only bug, the fix was only
available in the latest version aside from the occasional backport. Now bugfixes
are available regardless of your NDK API level.




Aside from bugfixes, this also means you'll have access to modern Linux UAPI
headers at every target version. This will mostly be important for people
porting existing Linux code (especially low-level things). Something important
to keep in mind: just because you have the headers doesn't mean you're running
on a device with a kernel new enough to support every syscall. As always with
syscalls, ENOSYS is a possibility.




Beyond the Linux headers, you'll also have modern headers for OpenGL, OpenSLES,
etc. This should make it easier to conditionally use new APIs when you have an
older target API level. The GLES3 headers are now accessible on Ice Cream
Sandwich even though that library wasn't available until KitKat. You will still
need to use all the API calls via dlopen/dlsym, but you'll at least have
access to all the constants and #defines that you would need for invoking
those functions.


Note that we'll be removing the old headers from the NDK with r16, so the sooner
you file bugs, the smoother the transition will go.

Caveats

The API #ifdef guards do not exist in third-party headers like those found in
OpenGL. In those cases you'll receive a link time error (undefined reference)
rather than a compile time error if you use an API that is not available in your
targeted API level.




Standalone toolchains using GCC are not supported out of the box (nor will they
be). To use GCC, pass -D__ANDROID_API__=$API when compiling.

Enabling Unified Headers in Your Build

To ease the transition from the legacy headers to the unified headers, we
haven't enabled the new headers by default, though we'll be doing this in r15.
How you opt-in to unified headers will depend on your build system.

ndk-build

In your Application.mk:

    APP_UNIFIED_HEADERS := true

You can also set this property from the command-line like this:

    $ ndk-build APP_UNIFIED_HEADERS=true

If you're using ndk-build via Gradle with externalNativeBuild, specify the
following configuration settings in build.gradle:

    android {
      ...
      defaultConfig {
        ...
        externalNativeBuild {
          ndkBuild {
            ...
            arguments "APP_UNIFIED_HEADERS=true"
          }
        }
      }
    }

CMake

When configuring your build, set ANDROID_UNIFIED_HEADERS=ON. This will usually
take the form of invoking CMake with cmake -DANDROID_UNIFIED_HEADERS=ON
$OTHER_ARGS.




If you're using CMake via Gradle with externalNativeBuild, you can use:

    android {
      ...
      defaultConfig {
        ...
        externalNativeBuild {
          cmake {
            ...
            arguments "-DANDROID_UNIFIED_HEADERS=ON"
          }
        }
      }
    }

Standalone Toolchains

When creating your standalone toolchain, pass --unified-headers. Note that
this option is not currently available in the legacy script, make-standalone-toolchain.sh, but only in make_standalone_toolchain.py.

Experimental Gradle Plugin

Coming soon! Follow along here.

Custom Build System?

We've got you covered. Instructions on adding support for unified headers to
your build system can be found here.



For additional information about unified headers, see our docs and the tracking bug. If you're looking ahead to future releases, the most up-to-date version of the
documentation is in the master branch.

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Android Developer Story: LinkedIn uses Android Studio to build a performant app

Posted by Christopher Katsaros, Developer Marketing, Android





LinkedIn is the world's largest social network for professionals. LinkedIn has 10 apps on Google Play, including the flagship LinkedIn app, which provides all of the same features users find on the web, so users can do things like browse and send messages to their professional network with an improved user experience.



For LinkedIn, and other teams with a large number of developers adding code to a project, making sure that everyone pays attention to areas that affect performance is vital for the quality of their app. That's why the the LinkedIn mobile team uses Android Studio to build high quality Android apps.



Watch Pradeepta Dash, Engineering Manager for Infrastructure at LinkedIn, as well as Drew Hannay, Tech Lead for the Android Infrastructure team, talk about how Android Studio helps everyone on their team stay focused on these topics while getting new engineers quickly up and running:

The top Android developers use Android Studio to build powerful, successful apps for Google Play; you can learn more about the official IDE for Android app development, and get started for yourself.



Get more tips and watch more success stories in the Playbook for Developers app.

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Grow your app or game business on Google Play with new best practices

Posted by Dom Elliott, Developer Marketing, Google Play

We've updated the Android
Developers website with some useful information about Google Play and the
Google Play Developer Console for new and existing developers alike.


Visit the site to understand more about:

• How Google
  Play helps you grow your business
  


• The Google PlayDeveloper Console and its features
  


• Best
  practices to succeed on Google Play
  


• And more!

The updated business guide to succeeding on Google Play is full of best
practices and success stories from other developers grouped into five
objectives. Here are a few new articles to check out:

• Develop: Build a high quality app or game with best
  practices on topics such as implementing
  material design, testing
  on popular devices, using
  Firebase Analytics, and requesting
  permissions appropriately.
  


• Launch: Review the updated launch
  checklist, the localization checklist, and best practices on topics such as using pre-launch
  & crash reports, beta
  testing, and making a compelling
  store listing before publishing your app to the world.
  


• Engage: Keep users coming back to your app or game with
  best practices on topics such as links
  & search results, notifications,
  optimizing
  for Chromebooks, and Actions
  on Google.
  


• Grow: Build a valuable audience for your app with best
  practices on topics such as universal
  app campaigns, understanding
  user acquisition, expanding
  to new markets, and store
  listing experiments.
  


• Earn: Grow your revenue with best practices on topics such
  as subscriptions
  with Google Play In-app Billing, Android
  Pay, and improving
  conversions with Firebase Analytics.

Head to the best
practice guide to check out more of the articles. We'll continue to post
useful best practices and success stories here on the blog and to the guide so
you can read them on the web or in the Playbook
app. To stay up-to-date with our news and tips, opt in to emails from Google Play in
the Developer Console (or subscribe
here if you don't have a developer account).

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Future of Java 8 Language Feature Support on Android

Posted by James Lau, Product Manager 

At Google, we always try to do the right thing. Sometimes this means adjusting
our plans. We know how much our Android developer community cares about good
support for Java 8 language features, and we're changing the way we support
them.





We've decided to add support for Java 8 language features directly into the
current javac and dx set of tools, and deprecate the Jack toolchain. With this
new direction, existing tools and plugins dependent on the Java class file
format should continue to work. Moving forward, Java 8 language features will be
natively supported by the Android build system. We're aiming to launch this as
part of Android Studio in the coming weeks, and we wanted to share this decision
early with you.




We initially tested adding Java 8 support via the Jack toolchain. Over time, we
realized the cost of switching to Jack was too high for our community when we
considered the annotation processors, bytecode analyzers and rewriters impacted.
Thank you for trying the Jack toolchain and giving us great feedback. You can
continue using Jack to build your Java 8 code until we release the new support.
Migrating from Jack should require little or no work.




We hope the new plan will pave a smooth path for everybody to take advantage of
Java 8 language features on Android. We'll share more details when we release
the new support in Android Studio.

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Detecting and eliminating Chamois, a fraud botnet on Android

Posted by Security Software Engineers—Bernhard Grill, Megan Ruthven, and Xin Zhao

Google works hard to protect users across a variety of devices and environments. Part of this work involves defending users against Potentially Harmful Applications (PHAs), an effort that gives us the opportunity to observe various types of threats targeting our ecosystem. For example, our security teams recently discovered and defended users of our ads and Android systems against a new PHA family we've named Chamois.



Chamois is an Android PHA family capable of:

• Generating invalid traffic through ad pop ups having deceptive graphics inside the ad


• Performing artificial app promotion by automatically installing apps in the background


• Performing telephony fraud by sending premium text messages


• Downloading and executing additional plugins

Interference with the ads ecosystem

We detected Chamois during a routine ad traffic quality evaluation. We analyzed malicious apps based on Chamois, and found that they employed several methods to avoid detection and tried to trick users into clicking ads by displaying deceptive graphics. This sometimes resulted in downloading of other apps that commit SMS fraud. So we blocked the Chamois app family using Verify Apps and also kicked out bad actors who were trying to game our ad systems.

Our previous experience with ad fraud apps like this one enabled our teams to swiftly take action to protect both our advertisers and Android users. Because the malicious app didn't appear in the device's app list, most users wouldn't have seen or known to uninstall the unwanted app. This is why Google's Verify Apps is so valuable, as it helps users discover PHAs and delete them.

Under Chamois's hood

Chamois was one of the largest PHA families seen on Android to date and distributed through multiple channels. To the best of our knowledge Google is the first to publicly identify and track Chamois.

Chamois had a number of features that made it unusual, including:

• Multi-staged payload: Its code is executed in 4 distinct stages using different file formats, as outlined in this diagram.

This multi-stage process makes it more complicated to immediately identify apps in this family as a PHA because the layers have to be peeled first to reach the malicious part. However, Google's pipelines weren't tricked as they are designed to tackle these scenarios properly.

• Self-protection: Chamois tried to evade detection using obfuscation and anti-analysis techniques, but our systems were able to counter them and detect the apps accordingly.


• Custom encrypted storage: The family uses a custom, encrypted file storage for its configuration files and additional code that required deeper analysis to understand the PHA.


• Size: Our security teams sifted through more than 100K lines of sophisticated code written by seemingly professional developers. Due to the sheer size of the APK, it took some time to understand Chamois in detail.

Google's approach to fighting PHAs

Verify Apps protects users from known PHAs by warning them when they are downloading an app that is determined to be a PHA, and it also enables users to uninstall the app if it has already been installed. Additionally, Verify Apps monitors the state of the Android ecosystem for anomalies and investigates the ones that it finds. It also helps finding unknown PHAs through behavior analysis on devices. For example, many apps downloaded by Chamois were highly ranked by the DOI scorer. We have implemented rules in Verify Apps to protect users against Chamois.

Google continues to significantly invest in its counter-abuse technologies for Android and its ad systems, and we're proud of the work that many teams do behind the scenes to fight PHAs like Chamois.



We hope this summary provides insight into the growing complexity of Android botnets. To learn more about Google's anti-PHA efforts and further ameliorate the risks they pose to users, devices, and ad systems, keep an eye open for the upcoming "Android Security 2016 Year In Review" report.

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