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Android M Arrives In Q3: Native Fingerprint Support, Android Pay, 'Doze' Mode
MojoKid writes with yet more news from the ongoing Google IO conference: Google I/O kicked off this afternoon and the first topic of discussion was of course Google's next generation mobile operating system. For those that were hoping for a huge UI overhaul or a ton of whiz-bang features, this is not the Android release for you. Instead, Android M is more of a maintenance released focused mainly on squashing bugs and improving stability/performance across the board. Even though Android M is about making Android a more stable platform, there are a few features that have been improved upon or introduced for this release: App Permissions, Chrome Custom Tabs for apps, App Links (instead of asking you which app to choose when clicking a link, Android M's new Intent System can allow apps to verify that they are rightfully in possession of a link), NFC-based Android Pay, standardized fingerprint scanning support, and a new "doze" mode that supposedly offers 2X longer battery life when idle.
Is that Dice? Little Registry Cleaner now installs a ton of crap by default. Look at the latest reviews. You can still get a clean install by reading each of the dialog boxes but the point is it comes bundled with crap in the first place.
"For those that were hoping for a huge UI overhaul..."
Yeah, because we haven't had one of those in a whole year.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The App Permissions seem to be missing the crucial ability to deny internet access to an app. There are apps where network data connectivity is the problem. Similarly, I wonder if Google will have this permission setting capability on its internal applications. I know that I have a rather tightly worn tin foil hat when it comes to Google and the information they get, but the Xprivacy 'deny' list on my phone is a mile long, and that's with most of their apps frozen or forcibly pulled out, I find that Google's data access on the platform demands a tight leash, leading the 'privacy' and 'permissions' charge to ring of hypocrisy - "we'll make sure that only we have your location" doesn't mean much to me :/
Older applications not targeting M, will show permissions at install time and be granted by default, but the user will be able to revoke them, the platform will just give empty data or fail. From the preview documentation
Note: On devices running the M Developer Preview, a user can turn off permissions for any app (including legacy apps) from the app's Settings screen. If a user turns off permissions for a legacy app, the system silently disables the appropriate functionality. When the app attempts to perform an operation that requires that permission, the operation will not necessarily cause an exception. Instead, it might return an empty data set, signal an error, or otherwise exhibit unexpected behavior. For example, if you query a calendar without permission, the method returns an empty data set.
If you are worried that old applications can use the permissions immediately after installation, before you have time to disable the permissions, take into account that applications are installed on a stopped state, there is no programmatic way for it to auto start itself. Start on boot may work but it is not precisely immediately. So I think the best action is to go to those old applications just after install and remove every permission you don't want to grant before starting it.
Google Play works fine with cyanogen.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Log in or piss off.
The most common version is now KitKat with 39.8%. Jelly Bean is second with 39.2% and Lollipop has just under 10%.
https://developer.android.com/...
Keep in mind that a lot of Android users have low incomes and/or live in countries where an over the air OS update would be a significant cost to the average person. We might think that a smartphone is useless without at least a 1GB per month data plan, but hundreds of millions of users in the developing world think otherwise.