Optimized Location and Sensor Capabilities

Optimized Location and Sensor Capabilities

Hardware geofencing optimizes for power efficiency by performing location computation in the device hardware, rather than in software. On devices that support hardware geofencing, Google Play services geofence APIs will be able to take advantage of this optimization to save battery while the device is moving.

Wi-Fi scan-only mode is a new platform optimization that lets users keep Wi-Fi scan on without connecting to a Wi-Fi network, to improve location accuracy while conserving battery. Apps that depend on Wi-Fi for location services can now ask users to enable scan-only mode from Wi-Fi advanced settings. Wi-Fi scan-only mode is not dependent on device hardware and is available as part of the Android 4.3 platform.

New sensor types allow apps to better manage sensor readings. A game rotation vector lets game developers sense the device’s rotation without having to worry about magnetic interference. Uncalibrated gyroscope and uncalibrated magnetometer sensors report raw measurements as well as estimated biases to apps.

The new hardware capabilities are already available on Nexus 7 (2013) and Nexus 4 devices, and any device manufacturer or chipset vendor can build them into their devices.

New Media Capabilities

Modular DRM framework

Through a combination of new APIs and enhancements to existing APIs, the media DRM framework provides anintegrated set of services for managing licensing and provisioning, accessing low-level codecs, and decoding encrypted media data. A new MediaExtractor API lets you get the PSSH metadata for DASH media. Apps using the media DRM framework manage the network communication with a license server and handle the streaming of encrypted data from a content library.

VP8 encoder

Android 4.3 introduces built-in support for VP8 encoding, accessible from framework and native APIs. For apps using native APIs, the platform includes OpenMAX 1.1.2 extension headers to support VP8 profiles and levels. VP8 encoding support includes settings for target bitrate, rate control, frame rate, token partitioning, error resilience, reconstruction and loop filters. The platform API introduces VP8 encoder support in a range of formats, so you can take advantage of the best format for your content.

VP8 encoding is available in software on all compatible devices running Android 4.3. For highest performance, the platform also supports hardware-accelerated VP8 encoding on capable devices.

Video encoding from a surface

Starting in Android 4.3 you can use a surface as the input to a video encoder. For example, you can now direct a stream from an OpenGL ES surface to the encoder, rather than having to copy between buffers.

Media muxer

Apps can use new media muxer APIs to combine elementary audio and video streams into a single output file. Currently apps can multiplex a single MPEG-4 audio stream and a single MPEG-4 video stream into a single MPEG-4 ouput file. The new APIs are a counterpart to the media demuxing APIs introduced in Android 4.2.

Playback progress and scrubbing in remote control clients

Since Android 4.0, media players and similar applications have been able to offer playback controls from remote control clients such as the device lock screen, notifications, and remote devices connected over Bluetooth. Starting in Android 4.3, those applications can now also expose playback progress and speed through their remote control clients, and receive commands to jump to a specific playback position.

New Ways to Build Beautiful Apps

Access to notifications

Notifications have long been a popular Android feature because they let users see information and updates from across the system, all in one place. Now in Android 4.3, apps can observe the stream of notifications with the user's permission and display the notifications in any way they want, including sending them to nearby devices connected over Bluetooth.

You can access notifications through new APIs that let you register a notification listener service and with permission of the user, receive notifications as they are displayed in the status bar. Notifications are delivered to you in full, with all details on the originating app, the post time, the content view and style, and priority. You can evaluate fields of interest in the notifications, process or add context from your app, and route them for display in any way you choose.

The new API gives you callbacks when a notification is added, updated, and removed (either because the user dismissed it or the originating app withdrew it). You'll be able to launch any intents attached to the notification or its actions, as well as dismiss it from the system, allowing your app to provide a complete user interface to notifications.

Users remain in control of which apps can receive notifications. At any time, they can look in Settings to see which apps have notification access and enable or disable access as needed. Notification access is disabled by default — apps can use a new Intent to take the user directly to the Settings to enable the listener service after installation.

View overlays

You can now create transparent overlays on top of Views and ViewGroups to render a temporary View hierarchy or transient animation effects without disturbing the underlying layout hierarchy. Overlays are particularly useful when you want to create animations such as sliding a view outside of its container or dragging items on the screen without affecting the view hierarchy.

Optical bounds layout mode

A new layout mode lets you manage the positioning of Views inside ViewGroups according to their optical bounds, rather than their clip bounds. Clip bounds represent a widget’s actual outer boundary, while the new optical bounds describe the where the widget appears to be, within the clip bounds. You can use the optical bounds layout mode to properly align widgets that use outer visual effects such as shadows and glows.

Custom rotation animation types

Apps can now define the exit and entry animation types used on a window when the device is rotated. You can set window properties to enable jump-cut, cross-fade, or standard window rotation. The system uses the custom animation types when the window is fullscreen and is not covered by other windows.

Screen orientation modes

Apps can set new orientation modes for Activities to ensure that they are displayed in the proper orientation when the device is flipped. Additionally, apps can use a new mode to lock the screen to its current orientation. This is useful for apps using the camera that want to disable rotation while shooting video.

Intent for handling Quick Responses

Android 4.3 introduces a new public Intent that lets any app handle Quick Responses — text messages sent by the user in response to an incoming call, without needing to pick up the call or unlock the device. Your app can listen for the intent and send the message to the caller over your messaging system. The intent includes the recipient (caller) as well as the message itself.

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