We all thought Android 4.4 KitKat was a major change when it came out late last year, but the still unnamed L release of Android puts that to shame. Despite not telling us the Code name (Lollipop?) or the version number (5.0?), Google demoed an updated UI called Material design and a plethora of new features. You won’t be able to get your hands on the final version of L until this fall, but Apple is going to have its work cut out for it competing with the new Android, even after its lauded iOS 8 announcement. Here’s how Android is evolving and what that means for the iOS vs. Android Match up coming later this year.
Material Design
Material design is the name of Google’s new interface guidelines — much like Microsoft and Metro — and it’s a radical departure from Android of the past. It adopts the color palliate from Google Now with blues, muted greens, and red, but white is still the dominant color. It provides a more lively tapestry on which to paint the updated Android interface.
Android is still adhering to flat design, which is the trend, but it’s layered flatness. Google describes this as a take on stacks of paper, but a digital paper that can shift and morph into different shapes. The new SDK will allow developers to describe the way UI elements are layered (an elevation value), which can be used to render parts of an app as if they are floating just above another. Android L renders subtle shadows on the edges that give a feeling of depth without cluttering the screen. Every little change in the new Android UI also comes with some sort of animation, even if it’s fast. Ideally, there won’t be any more hard transitions.
How does this compare to Apple? Cuppertino has taken a lot of heat for its iOS 7 redesign, but it’s slowly winning people over. iOS 8 continues the trend of flat design with the transparent glass effect. Design is a pretty subjective thing, but you have to admit Google is doing some very interesting things with Material Design.
Performance
Apple made a big fuss about the new Metal graphics API included in iOS 8, which will allow developers to design games that run considerably faster. The Swift programming language was also rolled out for iOS devs to create more streamlined apps. It all adds up to faster apps. Android response? A new runtime and the Android Extension Pack (AEP).
Google developed the AEP in partnership with Nvidia. It was demoed on the Nvidia Tegra K1 at I/O, but it should run on all ARM chips. AEP is a collection of extensions for OpenGL ES that adds features like tessellation and compute shaders that close the gap betweenmobile graphics and DirectX 11 on PCs. Google didn’t list any performance numbers, but Mountain View has another trick up its sleeve in this department.
Android L is the end of the line for Dalvik, the virtual machine in Android that compiles Java from apps into native code. Dalvik is what’s called a “just in time” compiler — you run an app, and it compiles the code as you go. The replacement for Dalvik was included in KitKat as a beta feature — the Android Runtime or ART. A device using ART compiles Java into native code upon installation and caches it, which makes all apps and games faster, piping the bits right to the hardware. Apple’s famous responsiveness advantage might be going away.
Power saving
In all these years, Google has neglected to create a basic battery saving mode for Android. A number of OEMs have done it on their own, like Samsung with its Ultra Power Saver Mode on the Galaxy S5. However, Android L is going to have Project Volta. This is a major change to the way Android manages battery life.
Project Volta will include an easy-to-use setting that users can flip on to down-clock the CPU, disable background data, and tweak other settings to save power. Google claims this feature can add another 90 minutes of life to a Nexus 5, which lasts about a day as it currently stands. That’s not a huge difference, and Apple has always been able to tout its superior battery life thanks to a more restricted app model.
Android L will at least make it easier to avoid power draining apps and services with an enhanced Battery Historian feature. It’s no secret the battery management screen in current builds of Android is junk. The new one lists detailed information about device wakeup alarms and wakelocks. This is long overdue, but iOS will probably still win in overall battery life
Enhanced notifications
For all the improvements iOS has made in notifications, it’s still more of a hassle to deal with them than it should be. The upcoming iOS 8 does add some handy actionable notifications with buttons and quick reply functionality, but Android L does that and more.
The look and feel of Android L notifications have been changed to embrace cards and the new Material Design language. When you pull down the status bar, you get a stack of cards with the most important ones at the top. Android will learn from your actions to decide just which ones those are. Anything deemed low priority is collapsed at the bottom of the stack, but you can open them all with a swipe.
Even before iOS added actionable notifications, Android had the same basic functionality. In L, Google has included more iOS-like heads-up notifications. When a high prioritynotification comes in, a bar will slide down from the top of the screen with action buttons. You can choose to deal with it, or simply swipe it away. This is a great improvement, and puts Google way out in the lead again if it can get the priority ranking right.
Tangentially related to notifications is the updated Android lock screen. As of this new Android version (Lollipop, Lemon Meringue, whatever), the lock screen is tied into the notification tray. When viewing the stack of notification cards on the lock screen, you can tap on any of them to launch the app. The twist is that you can unlock the phone simply by closing the notification shade because they’re kind of the same thing now. But is that insecure? Not as much as you’d think with personal unlocking feature. Android L can learn what locations are safe and disable your PIN or pattern lock for faster access. It can also tie into Bluetooth devices like a smartwatch to know whether it is being held by you or someone else that shouldn’t be snooping.
Multitasking and web integration
You might recall Apple is tweaking its multitasking interface in iOS 8. The big change came in last year’s upgrade, but this fall Cupertino will be adding contact shortcuts to the app switcher. Google, on the other hand, is adding the entire internet to its app switcher. This is the realization of the previously rumored Project Hera — a way for web content and apps to list items together in the multitasking stack.
The Android 4.4 recent app list is like iOS, it only lists apps. In Android L, the recent list will be a Material Design-style stack with Chrome tabs along with apps. So if you’reresearching something in multiple tabs while also hopping back and forth between apps, you’ll be able to get there much faster. You don’t even have to switch to Chrome each time — the tabs you have open will render full-screen in a frame right there.
There are a ton of other things that can be done with this kind of integration, but Google is only showing the basics like deep linking to apps in web searches.
The coming battle
This is the first time Google has done an Apple-style reveal of its new platform, but it’s a very smart move. A preview build of Android L is coming out for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 7, which will allow developers to get apps ready for Material Design and Android L APIs. That’s exactly what Apple has been doing for years, and with great success. An early Android preview also gives OEMs a chance to get plans in place for updates.
This fall there will be two very mature platforms with strong developer backing. Google is doing big things with Android L, and it may be moving too fast for Apple to ever completely catch up. Any hope that iOS could compete on features is looking more unlikely in the wake of Google I/O, but we’ve got a few months to argue about that..
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