Here’s my (very biased) takeaways from several talks at Google I/O 2024:
- AICore & Gemini seem like an actually exciting use of LLMs. I can see a bunch of light touch and cool generative features popping up in Android apps once the APIs become accessible.
- “Edge to edge” (filling the screen) will be the default display mode for Activities in Android 15 (for apps targeting it). It looks like you can opt out with a flag in the manifest, but I imagine this is the moment to deal with that.
- Predictive Back will finally be enabled (without a developer setting) in Android 15, but it still looks like it’ll be opt-in (via the
android:enableOnBackInvokedCallback manifest flag). They’ve flip-flopped on this before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up behind a developer setting again in Android 15’s final release.
- The minimum installable target SDK version for Android 15 will be 24. This is most likely only a problem for unmaintained apps (and their users).
- Compose is still a big deal! The compiler is now part of Kotlin’s (rather than Android) repos and release cycle, which is… interesting? It’s not clear if this makes Compose more or less likely to get dumped or replaced with “Compose 2” (see Angular). I can’t explain it, but it seems like a good thing to me. However, it still feels to me like there isn’t a huge need to rush in given that it’s mostly just a big chunk of sugar on top of the “native” components. I’d probably want to start a new app (or section of an app) in it rather than bothering with rewrites.
- Android will now auto lock using “theft detection”, presumably if the gyro thinks it’s been snatched by some asshole on a scooter.
- Not a single talk on testing! You can however generate tests for code with Gemini which feels like an absolute nightmare.
- The new 16 KB memory page size might affect any apps using NDK code.