The first Android N Developer Preview was released by Google in March, and now, the Developer Preview 4 of Android N is available. This looks like the last developer preview as Google will begin the roll out of Android N for consumers later this summer.
Google has also included the Android N final SDK along with Android N Developer Preview 4. The final SDK for Android N can be downloaded through SDK manager in Android Studio. You get everything you need to develop and test against the official APIs in the Android N platform. Talking about the fourth developer preview, the build number has now been updated to NPD56N.
Here’s what is new in Android N Developer Preview 4:
- Developer Preview 4 includes the final APIs for the upcoming Android N platform. The new API level is 24.
- You can now publish apps that use API level 24 to Google Play, in alpha, beta, and production release channels.
- The final API 24 SDK is provided along with Developer Preview 4 to be used with Android Studio 2.1.2 and higher. In addition, updated Developer Preview 4 system images have also been released for the emulator to help test your apps.
- In previous versions of Android, an app activates with all of its locale resources loaded before locale negotiation begins. Starting in Android N DP4, the system negotiates resource locales individually for each resource object before the app activates.
- The Launcher Shortcuts feature have been deferred to a later release of Android. The Launcher Shortcuts APIs have also been removed from Developer Preview 4.
- The BLE Scanning behavior has been changed in DP4. The applications will be prevented from starting and stopping scans more than 5 times in 30 seconds. Long running scans will be converted into opportunistic scans.
- The Multi-Window
android:minimalHeight
andandroid:minimalWidth
attributes have been renamed toandroid:minHeight
andandroid:minWidth
.
Click here for more details about the Android N Developer Preview 4. The Android N Developer Preview 4 is available for Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, and Pixel C devices, as well as General Mobile 4G [Android One].
You can get the Android N Developer Preview 4 image files from here and OTA files from here. We don’t think that Google will release any more developer previews of Android N as they are planning to roll out the final version for consumers later this summer. Google also recently confirmed that the official name of Android N will be revealed in the next few weeks.
What do you think will be the final name of Android N? Any guesses?