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Google Releases Android N Developer Preview 2
An anonymous reader writes: Google on Wednesday released the second developer preview of Android N. The update, which comes a month after the release of first Android N developer preview, brings with it a number of features and improvements. On a blog post, Google wrote that it is adding Vulkan, a low-overhead graphics API to the package. This would supposedly offload some CPU-bound processes to GPU. Also in the build are new "human-looking" emojis. Improvements can be found here.
So we've got "Vulkan is a new 3D rendering API", something I'd consider part of a normal update for an OS. A point or two later I read "[w]e are introducing a new emoji design for people emoji that moves away from our generic look".
I am amazed that these two updates would be applied to the same infrastructure.
Seriously. The simple yellow circle with expressions are perfect because the are nonspecific and can be assumed to apply to everyone.
Now we are adding skin tone... Why? That just opens the door to people complaining about hair color, hair style, eye color, face shape and a ton of other things.
Where is the identical set of emojis for people wearing an eye patch. Left or right eye? Scars? Bald people? Glasses? People who lost their noses in tragic plastic surgery incidents?
They have family emojis. Where is the mixed race family? Same Gender couple? Family with 2 boys, family with 2 girls. How about the family with 4 boys, 2 girls a parrot and a lama?
Specificity is not always helpful.
This is progress. Soon we'll all have our own emojis, and the massive amount of data involved will improve server and server hard drive sales.
Exactly. Congrats, designers, your emoji have now crossed into the uncanny valley, with all the negative ramifications thereof. Some of them still retain the traditional yellow color but now have noses, hair, clothes, etc, and it just looks creepy, like watered-down Simpsons characters designed not to cause any offense. Others are colored more "realistically", and now look like drawings from a child's picture book, and rather bland ones at that.
Not that this is worth getting irritated or worried about... I just think it's amusing that this is actually a "feature" that's being touted. The addition of the Vulkan rendering API seems a hell of a lot more interesting.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Are you sure that the changes is not so much the software but just your perception? I mean I am not at all stating you are wrong, but you have to factor in that generally when people get older they look more into familiarity versus functionality. The younger generation is willing to try out new things while the older generation would prefer to know how to do things as they were done before. The reason why I state this is because I am still noticing an increase of capabilities of software/OSs over time and I remember that even back in the late 90s early 2000s there was still bugs and issues with new releases. That and being able to "do more" lead to more bugs and bloat, regardless of back then or nowadays.
I'm an Android guy who whines about it often, being a fan doesn't mean you think things are infallible.
So with that said:
I've been using this OS for over 5 years now, is it even possible at this point to improve the 'backend' core code? The UI continues to be, mildly sluggish in some situations, even on modern hardware. /swap or storage or whatever. By the time you can see the screenshot, process in your brain where you want to click and move your hand there, it's loaded seemlessly behind it. - Clever things like this should be in Android.
I read an article years ago, that Apple 'cheats' with speed stuff, in clever ways. One example, when you quit an app, it takes a silent screenshot of the app. Next time you re-open that application, it calls the screenshot quickly, while loading the real app from
On a larger scale, can the issue of updates ever be solved? Unless you buy a stock google device (I don't like them, sorry) then you're utterly boned. Updates need to come from google, then passed to your handset manufacturer, then passed to your carrier and finally you. OFTEN this breaks down and updates are either delayed or simply don't occur.
As someone without coding skill, is there *any* way this can be addressed? How can google bypass the handset manufacturer? Can they? It's becoming a worse and worse situation.
I still use an ipad and iphone as my spare, I can't deny - I love that updates for 2,3,4 year old phones still get pushed down the line and despite some claims of performance issues baked in to these updates, personally I'm not seeing them.
I like Android, quite a bit - but man do I wish it were faster. Since I've started using it on a HTC HD2,till now, it's still not quick enough, even with bloat disabled and animations turned off.
I feel like Google is focusing on stupid shit now (emojis) rather than important stuff. The days of clever innovation seem gone.
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That just opens the door to people complaining
That seems like a pretty good justification for never doing anything. Seriously who cares? Let them complain ... just like you are right now. If they do nothing somebody complains, if they do something somebody complains.
Specificity is not always helpful.
And sometimes it is, if you don't need it then just use the simple yellow ones.
The latest update has broken even more apps. Already things like Skype or anything that used audio functions, had stopped working. Now various other things have stopped, only spitting out error messages that cover the screen.
I'm about ready to erase the phone and go back to Marshmallow.
Sig for hire.
Bluetooth LE is broken, taking a photo in portrait is broken, I mean WTF
Some 3rd party Android nightlies where messy, but this easily beats everything so far. At least they were frequent and easily revertible if needed.
Trying to load the factory images is broken as well if you did not already unlock your bootloader, because unlocking you bootloader is broken as well.
Really Google... WTF
... really?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
And yet, there is still no effort on Android's part to fix IPv6 so it's usable for companies.
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=32621
This has existed for FOUR YEARS. There are numerous highly rated rants on youtube about this issue. Google doesn't fix it on the simple basis that it doesn't "fit their ecosystem". They're basically pulling a Microsoft here.
I mean, shit. Human like emojis?
Fuck you, Google.
I can't wait until Tizen or something else becomes available. Maybe I'll get a land line.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers