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Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#61

Post by akerro »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #56
akerro wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually wish there was an Android release targeted for Dart support with more Dart promotion. Since this year Java got a lot more powers, they're moving the language and ecosystem much faster, functional targets for Java 12 (will be released in 2019) contain almost everything Kotlin has now.

Given the legal wrangling with Oracle, I don't think they will be eager to support Java. However, Kotlin has a native compiler (llvm based) as well. You can target Android/IOS with it as well as Wasm or simple desktop/server executables. So, the smart move would be to deemphasize Dart, move flutter on top of Kotlin native/llvm (and why not expose it to other languages as well; e.g. swift). Then they cab move the enti…

Do you have anything specific in mind about Oracle-Java? They opensource a lot in the last two years, OracleJava is basically 99.9% openJDK now, the main JDK is OpenJDK, Flight Recorder is open-source, graalVM is GPL2...

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#62

Post by mulrian »

akerro wrote: post #49
izacus wrote: post #26

It's rather sad to see how none of the comments here are actually commenting on Android P/Kotlin friendliness. (Which is available to all Android developers, not only those targeting P - the nullability headers will give you all the benefits even if your app supports older Androids.)

I actually wish there was an Android release targeted for Dart support with more Dart promotion. Since this year Java got a lot more powers, they're moving the language and ecosystem much faster, functional targets for Java 12 (will be released in 2019) contain almost everything Kotlin has now.

You must have not written much Kotlin then as no, it really won't come close still. Even if they manage to get everything planned in for 12 - which they won't - most will still wait for the next LTS anyway.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#63

Post by matwood »

balladeer wrote: post #40
emidln wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sample size 1 here. I used an iPhoneX for a few months this year. It was my first iPhone, and I loathed the browser lock-in and the lack of automatic contacts sync. The UX is far less consistent than modern Android apps (e.g. the back functionality out of an app). I missed my app drawer as well. The iPhone was free from work, yet I paid out of pocket for a Galaxy S9+ so I could go back to Android.

Let's make it sample size 2 (include me). I have been Android developer since ~7 years and I finally moved to iPhone ~2 years back with iPhone SE (mostly because it was the only sanely sized as per my needs and taste) and I also got the iOS 11 upgrade with the rest of the world and will get iOS 12 again in sometime. My experience on iOS has been a lot smoother than that on Android. It almost never crashes esp. when I…

I have your similar opinion. I was an iPhone user from the original iPhone to the 4s. I wanted a large phone, and wanted to experience Android so moved to an HTC One X. It was okay, but it didn't have the vanilla Android experience so I went to the Nexus 5 and even had a Nexus 7. I was satisfied with those, mainly because the price matched the performance/build quality/random issues I had.

An OS update caused my Nexus 7 to take minutes to open apps (I think it was eventually fixed), and my Nexus 5 kept having a random google process spin out of control and drain the battery to zero in minutes. I decided to take another look at the iPhone, and switched back. It also didn't help that Google dropped the budget line and moved towards flagship pricing.

I doubt I'll switch again since functionality is roughly equivalent between the two, and the iPhone I think is the better of the two wrt privacy. Is the iPhoneX perfect? No, but it's easily the best phone I've ever used.

BTW, I have developed and released both Android and iOS apps. Be happy you even have Android Studio now. For all the complaints about Xcode, the overall experience is a pleasure compared to developing for Android. I don't know what it is like now, but debugging in iOS was easy compared to just even getting the emulator running on the Android side. The iOS frameworks also provide so much functionality. I don't program native mobile apps at all anymore. I do miss it though.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#64

Post by distances »

j16sdiz wrote: post #47
skybrian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an Android developer but they say supporting older versions should still work: "Existing apps that are not receiving updates are unaffected. Developers remain free to use a minSdkVersion of their choice, so there is no change to your ability to build apps for older Android versions." [1] https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/deve...

Not if you want to be listed on play store > As we announced last year, Google Play will require all app updates to target Android Oreo (targetSdkVersion 26 or higher) by November 2018. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducin...

Target sdk is different from min sdk. The feature set you can use depends on min sdk.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#65

Post by pawadu »

izacus wrote: post #52
knuththetruth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conflating a very real and common concern (fragmentation in the android market) with “toxicity” seems a bit excessive.

The OP wrote a post which has nothing to do with article at hand and is deliberately misleading. I think the term is fitting - it's complaining for complaining's sake. And that's toxic in a community. Compare it with the frontend developers - dealing with Android fragmentation is signficantly easier than dealing with browser and device fragmentation as a web developer... and those topics aren't full of people complai…

These negative posts always show up on top when something even remotely positive about android is posted.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#66

Post by pawadu »

__sr__ wrote: post #58
izacus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any kind of app targeting westen world (meaning - it's not localised into Hindi, African and Chinese languages), the market share of Lollipop will be below 20%. According to most app stats I've seen (mine and others), Android 6.0+ is pretty much on 80%+, with Oreo nearing 40% since Samsung started rollouts.

> For any kind of app targeting westen world (meaning - it's not localised into Hindi, African and Chinese languages), the market share of Lollipop will be below 20%. Where exactly are you getting this data from? Please do not put random numbers without citing sources.

If you have published apps on Android, the developer console gives you detailed information about YOUR install base.

Couldn't care less about someone in Somalia using Android 4.4 when 80% of my users are on Oreo.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#67

Post by izacus »

__sr__ wrote: post #58
izacus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any kind of app targeting westen world (meaning - it's not localised into Hindi, African and Chinese languages), the market share of Lollipop will be below 20%. According to most app stats I've seen (mine and others), Android 6.0+ is pretty much on 80%+, with Oreo nearing 40% since Samsung started rollouts.

> For any kind of app targeting westen world (meaning - it's not localised into Hindi, African and Chinese languages), the market share of Lollipop will be below 20%. Where exactly are you getting this data from? Please do not put random numbers without citing sources.

It's based on my personal and my company apps. Obviously I can't give you links to our Play Store / Analytics backends. I guess there's an aggregator somewhere?

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#68

Post by jillesvangurp »

akerro wrote: post #61
jillesvangurp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the legal wrangling with Oracle, I don't think they will be eager to support Java. However, Kotlin has a native compiler (llvm based) as well. You can target Android/IOS with it as well as Wasm or simple desktop/server executables. So, the smart move would be to deemphasize Dart, move flutter on top of Kotlin native/llvm (and why not expose it to other languages as well; e.g. swift). Then they cab move the enti…

Do you have anything specific in mind about Oracle-Java? They opensource a lot in the last two years, OracleJava is basically 99.9% openJDK now, the main JDK is OpenJDK, Flight Recorder is open-source, graalVM is GPL2...

The problems between oracle and google are related to copyright and APIs. Androids OSS java bits are licensed differently(Apache license if I recall correctly) and technically a partially API compatible implementation of Java about 10 years ago with lots of Google specific additions and some code inherited from IBMs harmony project.

In any case, compiler technology has moved forward a lot and as Apple has been showing with IOS and Swift, you can do some pretty decent app ecosystem around native code without having to expose your developers to doing C/C++.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#69

Post by euyyn »

scarface74 wrote: post #28
euyyn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accounting for installation numbers only, there are about 6 Android users for each iOS user in the world. So targeting API 25 (Nougat 7.1) already gives you access to a bigger number of users. Targeting earlier API versions only increases that number.

- Most apps aren’t targeting “the world”. Assuming your app is targeting English speaking countries, that skews the numbers more toward iOS (still not a majority), then if your app requires a decent level of hardware, that skews even more toward iOS. Now if you actually want to target people who have the willingness to pay....

Well that's part of it too. "A lower ratio of Android users are willing to pay than for iOS users" is a meaningless statistic for someone that wants to target people with high-end phones willing to pay. Because those ratios refer to the whole world. They do not mean "there are more iOS users willing to pay than Android users".

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#70

Post by scarface74 »

euyyn wrote: post #69
scarface74 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Most apps aren’t targeting “the world”. Assuming your app is targeting English speaking countries, that skews the numbers more toward iOS (still not a majority), then if your app requires a decent level of hardware, that skews even more toward iOS. Now if you actually want to target people who have the willingness to pay....

Well that's part of it too. "A lower ratio of Android users are willing to pay than for iOS users" is a meaningless statistic for someone that wants to target people with high-end phones willing to pay. Because those ratios refer to the whole world. They do not mean "there are more iOS users willing to pay than Android users".

The number of high end phones that are iPhones is greater than the number of high end Android phones - not just percentage.

Samsun is the number one maker of phones and the number one maker of high end phones - if thier average selling price per phone is still only $235 (https://www.sammobile.com/2017/08/02/average-selling-price-s...). Even they sell mostly low in phones.

Epic didn’t even bother supporting but two Android devices at launch (https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17661358/fortnite-android-...) compared to the iOS version that supports devices back to 2016.

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