Nice to see they're working on rendering-performance. I bought the prev Nexus 7 but returned it some days later. The jittery scrolling and constant microlag drove me crazy.
What's new in Android 4.3
101–110 of 125 posts
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#102This is more developer related, but one of the biggest news is a backwards compatible ActionBar in the official support library. All that's left to say is a big, enormous thank you to Jake Wharton for keeping us all sane until now. Edit: The video about the ActionBarCompat is available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TGgYqfJnyc#at=20 Seems largely identical to ABS in its implementation, which makes sense.
Absolutely ActionBarCompat is the best addition to 4.3. Thanks for the video link.
Um, its worth nothing that ActionBarCompat is not an addition to 4.3. Its an addition to the support library. If you include the support library in your project and you can use features from 4.3, such as fragments, and the action bar all the way back to android 1.6. The support library is a backport of modern functionality.
This is part of googles approach to addressing fragmentation on the Android platform.
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#103"Nexus 7 should receive the update today, other devices in the coming week" http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/android-4-3-will-be-availab...
Maybe they changed it since your comment, it now says ". All of these devices will receive the over-the-air update today." Seems highly unlikely to me. I haven't gotten the update on my Galaxy Nexus yet.
'Recieve' there means that the OTA is out and being deployed to some devices, not that it's been rolled out and made available to everyone. If you want the update sooner, you can download the factory images and flash it. (which have already been released).
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#104Not to start a flame war here...but what is the likelihood that newer devices still on 4.1 will be bumped to 4.3, on the reasoning that third-parties waited until 4.3 to make the upgrade? Or does it become increasingly unlikely that any upgrade will happen? I have a Sprint HTC One...which was released in 4.2's latter days but still had 4.1...wondering if an upgrade will ever happen
That seems to be largely a carrier issue, and unfortunately the best solution seems to be to root the device and install/update stock Android manually. This is why Google is moving a lot of Android's functionality into applications, which can be updated easily via the Google Play Store.
I should also put a shout out to the compatibility library and google play services - these mean app developers are not tied to having to code against the latest version of android to use new features.
Essentially all Android updates do now is to change some of the core OS plumbing. The big changes from 4.1 to 4.2 were rendering speedups. 4.3 seems to be new versions of the bluetooth stack and open GL.
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right with respect to the Google-sold devices. Unfortunately, these are only a minority - and this step will make it significantly harder to root devices made by Samsung, HTC, Sony and all the others...
The point is, you shouldn't need to root the device. That's a red herring. You can completely modify the source and then flash the device. All these manufacturers give you methods for flashing. You mention Sony[1], Samsung[2], HTC[3], here you go ... In time projects like Cyanogenmod will have ROMs baked for you that'll give you root. But why should it be easy for a user to root their device? If the user can do it a…
You need root, because there are apps you want to run, that need root permissions. The use cases for these apps are very wide, from ad blocking to repairing OEM fuckups (I'm looking at you, Asus).
Anyway, it is easy to "root" Windows or Mac OSX. It is just logging in as administrator in Windows or using sudo in OSX. The paranoia and preventing the user to really control the device they bought is a new thing, that came with mobile OSes. It wasn't so widespread before.
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#106This is more developer related, but one of the biggest news is a backwards compatible ActionBar in the official support library. All that's left to say is a big, enormous thank you to Jake Wharton for keeping us all sane until now. Edit: The video about the ActionBarCompat is available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TGgYqfJnyc#at=20 Seems largely identical to ABS in its implementation, which makes sense.
Personally, I'm still really annoyed that Espresso - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7ugmCuNxDU - hasn't been released!
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Check Now button in About Phone seems to be something of a placebo button, as well. In the past I've got around this by going to Settings->Apps->Google Services and clearing the cache and killing the process. That will force an actual check by pressing the Check Now button. Of course, if your phone isn't scheduled to receive it yet then you'll still come up bupkis, like I have thus far.
I don't think anyone has gotten the OTA update yet. Once someone has, the zip will get posted and then we can all update from that. Or, you can flash the factory image which is out now but you'll lose your data on the phone.
Just checked for the update on my N4 and got it immediately. I'm in SE Asia, if that makes any difference.
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a device like that surely you must be eligible for a carrier-provided upgrade device. What device is it, and do you just like it more than anything more recent?
I wonder how many people are effectively stuck on older devices because Verizon wants to strip away unlimited plans (Verizon ended unlimited data in May 2012 and you have to switch to a limited plan to get the carrier subsidy).
The phone I have is a HTC Droid DNA, I bought it out of contract to keep my unlimited data. (~$600)
The only thing keeping me on Verizon is there excellent coverage in rural areas, it certainly isn't support, cost or devices.
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#109This is more developer related, but one of the biggest news is a backwards compatible ActionBar in the official support library. All that's left to say is a big, enormous thank you to Jake Wharton for keeping us all sane until now. Edit: The video about the ActionBarCompat is available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TGgYqfJnyc#at=20 Seems largely identical to ABS in its implementation, which makes sense.
I started using this today, and it's great. Even works immediately with ActionBarDrawerToggle, which is awesome.
Re: What's new in Android 4.3
#110From my time working with SELinux on the desktop I'm curious to see what they do with it eventually, now running it in permissive audit mode doesn't do much at all.
I'm wondering if the plan is to eventually have each app ship with a policy file (doubt it)? Use a targeted policy to only confine certain apps chosen by the user with corresponding policies and run everything else unconfined (minimizes breakage)? Run the entire dalvik vm in a separate confined domain? Just leave it there as an option for enterprise and government customers who would really take advantage of flexible interface for writing access policies?