Google releases the latest version of Google Play Services (4.1)
The latest release of Google Play services is now available on Android devices worldwide. It includes new Turn Based Multiplayer support for games, a preliminary API for integrating Google Drive into your apps and also improves battery life for all users with Google Location Reporting enabled.

Android Studio 0.4.3 has been released!
Android Studio 0.4.3 adds support for the new version of the Android Gradle plugin, along with new lint checks and a large number of bug fixes.

Version 0.8 of the Gradle plugin for Android has been released
Version 0.8 includes various new features and fixes.

UXD – LeanUX – Measurement – Quantitative and Qualitative (VIDEO)
Laura Klein, author of UX for Lean Startups, introduces you quantitative vs qualitative measurement in the Lean UX process, and when to use either or both, in order to validate assumptions and create products that users will actually want to use.

PlayBytes: Updating your App’s price (VIDEO)
Dan Levelle explains how to update your app’s price for multiple locations on Google Play using the Google Play Developer Console.

A new version of Espresso for Android has been released!
Swipe view actions and multi-window support along with other new updates, fixes and optimizations comprise this new release.

PlayBytes: App Visibility and Search (VIDEO)
Dan Lavelle shares some helpful tips about getting discovered on Google Play search. He reviews how to avoid common publishing and filtering oversights, recommendations for your Store Listing, and other helpful discoverability features.

Slides for Espresso Introduction presentation
Stephan Linzner shares slides containing hints, tips and advice from his recent talk on UI Testing For Android using Espresso.

Android++ Visual Studio extension
Rob Marvin shares an article about a native extension for Android app development in Visual Studio.

The u2020 App!
A sample Android app which showcases advanced usage of Dagger among other open source libraries.

Awesome Android Design by Nick Butcher
This slide deck is packed full of important information from beginner to experienced Android designers and developers!

Udemy releases its Android app
Udemy is a website to teach yourself things in lots of categories and now with the app, you can take lessons with you and even save them offline.

Android Design in Action: Beautiful Design Winter 2013 Highlights (VIDEO)
Marco Paglia and Abhilash Kuduvalli from the Android Design team join regular hosts Nick Butcher, Mike Denny and Roman Nurik to discuss some of their favorite design elements from the 9 new apps in the collection.

Create Code Template for Log.d in Eclipse and Android Studio
Fré Dumazy just found a way to save a lot of time while developing Android apps using Eclipse or Android Studio, by creating a shortcut for the typical Log.d statement.

Why Chrome apps on Android could be a very bad thing
JR Raphael discusses in his article why the ability to port Chrome apps to Android can be a detriment to its unified design initiatives.

Run Chrome Apps on mobile using Apache Cordova
Andrew Grieve, Software Engineer and WebView Wrangler, gives an overview of how Chrome apps can run in Apache Cordova and the available Chrome APIs that can be used.

Process Stats: Understanding How Your App Uses RAM
Dianne Hackborn of the Android framework team takes us for a first look at the Process Stats graphical tool, then dig into the details of the memory data behind it, how it’s collected, and why it’s so useful to you as you analyze your app.

PlayBytes: Play Games Best Practices (VIDEO)
Summary:    Todd Kerpelman takes a look at what we’ve learned by observing a few thousand games that make use of Play Games services, and comes up with some recommendations on how to make your own game approximately 38% more fun!

Chrome-Apps on mobile devices – a good idea?
Wolfram Rittmeyer, a software-developer from Germany, shares his thoughts on the recently announced news that Chrome apps can be ported to Android.

TextClock Version 2 – Part 4
Part 4 of the TextClock Version 2 Android app tutorial.

TextClock Version 2 – Part 5
Part 5 of the TextClock Version 2 Android app tutorial.

How to make gradient buttons in Android
This article discusses the steps in creating buttons in Android that have gradient fill.

How to make a chathead like Facebook messenger
This article discusses the implementation of the chathead feature similar to the one found in the Facebook Android app.

Keeping you up to date

This week is full of stuff from the Android Team. They’ve been cranking out the DevBytes faster than we can keep up with them.

 

Efficient Data Transfers: Variable Update Frequencies (VIDEO)
Reto Meier explains efficient data transfers by overviewing batching, bundling and Sync Adapters. This video includes a large amount of information in a short amount of time, it is worth bookmarking for easy access.

Android Jobs
Trying to find an Android Developer? Looking for an Android Job? Sign up for the new service that helps connects the two at AndroidJobs.IO

Android Design In Action – Onboarding (VIDEO)
Learn how to properly onboard new users to your application. First impressions matter!

Reduce the Jankiness in your TextView Alpha (VIDEO)
This 30 second clip shows you how to reduce the jankiness in your application that is caused by the alpha property in the TextView.

Folding Layout
Daniel Olshansky explains how to achieve a custom folding effect with stills and live camera feeds.

Parceler
This article details the use and execution of Parcelables in Android, including the use of annotating with Parceler. If you have to serialize Java Objects between Contexts this will be a great time saver.

Optimizing Line Length 
Roman Nurik explains the basics of readability in Android apps with some sample code as well.

Google’s Android Apps Look Boring – And It’s a Good Thing
This article is an interesting opinion on the importance of the standardized look, of Google Android apps.

Database and Content Provider Generator
Try out Jonas Kalderstams’ code that generates a database and ContentProvider.

Android Studio 0.2.10 Released
Android Studio update 0.2.10 fixes bugs and includes integrated trace view and quick documentation improvements.

New Google Play services Release
This release includes a number of bug fixes as well as a new map padding feature that allows you to reposition the controls on a map.

Summer Break is Over!

We had a small summer break of a couple weeks lately and now the kids are back in school and with that comes the weekly goodness that is the Android Dev Digest. This week we have TONS of good stuff from the Android Team. They’re literally dropping new stuff multiple times a day.

Enjoy !

Styling Android – Gradle Build Part 7
This series is shaping up to be quite the authority on Gradle for folks looking to perform builds with Gradle. Part 7 is now available:

Consuming Device Notifications with the NotificationListenerService
This post demonstrates how you can use the new NotificationListenerService in Android 4.3 to consume device notifications. The author then shows you how you can use this as a Dashclock extension.

Dashclock
Looking for a good example of how to build a home screen lock widget? Look no further than Dashclock, the open source replacement lock screen for Android 4.2 and above. Learn how to display local weather, your next calendar appointment, missed called, and more with this beautiful new lock screen.

Making Apps Beautiful Part 2
In this video Ankur Kotwal and Jan-Felix Schmakeit continue the series on how to make your apps beautiful.

Implicit Intents
With Android 4.3 we have restricted profiles and now there is some new guidance around how you should check to see if your app can perform certain actions with implicit intents. Read more about it here:

Foreground Services Update
If you have an application that has a service that runs in the foreground (re: startForeground()) you will want to read this update on the new behavior that is exhibited with notifications and foreground services.

Responsive Design
Nick Butcher covers the key points in which all devs need to think about when developing applications that will eventually be used on tablets and phones.

Fixing Overdraw Issues with Hierarchy Viewer
Learn about the Hierarchy Viewer tool (which can help a TON when debugging layout issues) to help fix overdraw issues.

Making your app Multi-User Friendly
Are you hardcoding paths in your application such as “/sdcard” or “/data/data/com.mypackage”? If so you should read this #ProTip from Fred Chung.

Flattening icons with Photoshop
Some of us are responsible for apps that are quite old and sometimes those apps have old icons that need to get upgraded from their old state to the new flat design guidelines in order to fit in the action bar correctly. This DesignBytes episodes covers how to update the icons accordingly.

Google I/IO 2013 App Source Code Now Available
The Android team has released the source code for the Google I/O 2013 Android app. This code includes some examples of how to use fragments properly in regards to responsive design which will work correctly in a phone context as well as a tablet context. It also includes the ActionBarCompat library as well (as well as many others like Volley).