News

Android Q Beta 4 Finalizes Developer APIs, SDK

• By David Ramel
• June 6, 2019

Google shipped Android Q Beta 4, which includes the final developer APIs and official SDK for the next update of the mobile OS.

Specifically, along with updated build tools for the Android Studio IDE, Beta 4 ships the final level 29 APIs and API 29 SDK.

"Together, these give you everything you need to test your apps for compatibility with Android Q and build with Android Q features and APIs," Google exec Dave Burke said in a June 5 blog post.

The post also provides a recap of recent developments in the Android space, focusing on the three main themes of innovation, security/privacy and digital wellbeing:

• 5G network connectivity
• Foldable phones
• Edge-to-edge screens
• Prioritizing the Kotlin programming language
• Jetpack expansion (libraries, tools and guides to help make app building quick and easy)
• Jetpack Compose -- a modern reactive-style UI toolkit for Android that takes advantage of Kotlin
• On-device machine learning and more

For developers testing their apps against the new beta, Burke advised them to focus on:

• Android Q privacy features, such as the new location permissions, restrictions on background activity starts, changes to data and identifiers
• Use of restricted non-SDK interfaces and move to public SDK or NDK equivalents instead
• The libraries and SDKs in an app to make sure they work as expected on Android Q and follow best practices for privacy, performance, UX, data handling and permissions

All of the new Android Q features and APIs are detailed here.

According to the timeline, two Android Q release candidates are scheduled to be released next, in the third quarter of the year, just before the final release.