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.

Comments

useless without updates

[Anonymous Coward]

The most common Android version in the wild is still.. Jelly Bean.

Android has dropped the ball on OS updates. Apple didn't do it perfect, but they are much better and mostly you can update devices to at least one or two more versions before it beomes obsolete.

Google needs to up their game around OS updates or it doesn't matter what they put in it, if nobody is running it.

Large change with app permissions

[SuperKendall]

They talk about how it's a stability release, but if you are going to compile your application with the newer dev tools you are going to have to do some work adapting to the iOS style permission model.

I'm really glad to see Android adopted this model, the previous model made no sense from any standpoint - it was worse for the users, and worse for security. Now that Android will ask for permission when you actually want to use some protected resource, they can make a way more informed choice if they should allow it or not - and on the fly decide an app can access some things and not others (say allowing Contacts but not location).

It's just a shame the older style permission model will be supported for some time to come, as it greatly eases the ability of spyware to operate on Android.