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Posted by Sandhya Mohan, Product Manager

Today, we are thrilled to announce the stable release of Android Studio Hedgehog 🦔 : The official IDE for building Android apps!

In this Android Studio release, we have upgraded the IntelliJ platform to 2023.1, with features designed to improve app performance and battery life, make it easier to upgrade applications to the latest Android version, and make it faster to develop using Jetpack Compose. Read on to learn more about how Android Studio Hedgehog can help supercharge your developer productivity.

App performance

Android vitals in App Quality Insights

In addition to helping you investigate crash reports for apps instrumented with the Firebase Crashlytics SDK, App Quality Insights now also includes Android vitals data from Google Play Console. With Android vitals, you can see crash reports for any app you publish to the Google Play Store without requiring additional instrumentation in your app. You can view Android vitals issues, filter them, and see crash insights from Play to quickly understand and resolve the cause of a crash, and jump from stack trace to code all from the App Quality Insights tool window. Learn more.

Note: If you don't have permission to view your app in the Play Console, request that the app admin share read-only access to only app quality information, by clicking Users and permissions > View app quality information (read-only) in the Play Console.

Power Profiler

The new Power Profiler shows power consumption on devices. It segments the power consumption information by subsystems called "Power Rails". This helps you visualize the correlation between power consumed and the actions occurring in your app. This approach of directly measuring power consumption differs from the legacy Energy Profiler, which only used a model to estimate energy consumption.

By understanding this information, you can potentially identify and fix power consumption issues in your app by running A/B tests to compare the power consumption of different algorithms, features or even different versions of your app.

Apps which are optimized for lower power consumption lead to an improved battery and thermal performance, eventually leading to an improved end user experience. Power Rails data is available on Pixel 6+ devices running Android 10+.

Coding productivity

Target Android 14 using Android SDK Upgrade Assistant

The SDK Upgrade Assistant provides a step by step wizard flow to help developers through targetSdkVersion upgrades. It pulls documentation directly into the IDE, saving you time and effort.

Android Studio Hedgehog adds support for upgrading projects to Android 14 (API Level 34). We've also added additional relevance filters so that unnecessary steps are removed - and in some cases, the upgrade assistant will pinpoint exactly where in code the changes need to be made.

New UI updates

In the Giraffe release, we launched a new UI for the IDE. This reimagined theme reduces visual complexity and provides easier access to essential features, resulting in a more modern and clean look and feel. We've listened to your feedback and, in Hedgehog, we've added updates for compact mode, vertical and horizontal splitting, and project tabs for Mac OS. If you have not yet tried the new UI, we encourage you to do so.

Device mirroring

You can now mirror your physical Android device in the Running Devices window in Android Studio. While mirroring your device's display directly via ADB over USB or Wi-FI to Android Studio, you can execute common actions such as starting and interacting with apps, rotating the screen, folding and unfolding the phone, changing the volume, and more - directly from within Android Studio. Learn more.

Embedded Layout Inspector

You now have the option to run the Layout Inspector directly in the Running Devices tool window while running your app on an embedded virtual device or mirrored physical device. This opt-in feature significantly improves performance of Layout Inspector, conserves screen real estate, helps organize your UI debugging workflow in a single tool window, and improves speed while inspecting your layout. In embedded mode, you can show a view hierarchy, inspect the properties of each view, navigate to code using "deep inspect" mode, and access other common Layout Inspector features. Enable it through Settings > Experimental > Layout Inspector

Live Edit updated manual mode shortcut

Live Edit has a new default shortcut for manual mode for: Control+\ (Command+\ for macOS). Manual mode is helpful in situations where you want to have precise control over when updates are deployed to the running application. For more information, see the video clip in Live Edit for Jetpack Compose.

Compose tools

Compose Preview's Gallery Mode

Gallery mode is a new mode in Compose Preview that lets you focus on one Preview at a time to conserve rendering resources. Use Gallery mode when iterating on UI and switch to other modes (Grid or List) when you need to see UI variants.

Compose State information in Debugger

When setting a breakpoint on a Composable function, the debugger now lists the parameters of the composable and their state, so you can more easily identify what changes might have caused unexpected recompositions.

Compose Multipreview templates

Android Studio Hedgehog includes support for the latest annotations added by the Compose Multipreview API, allowing developers to render common layout scenarios side-by-side while working with the Compose Preview.

The new annotations added include: @PreviewScreenSizes, @PreviewFontScales, @PreviewLightDark, and @PreviewDynamicColors

Build tools

New macro to specify JDK path

A new macro, #GRADLE_LOCAL_JAVA_HOME, makes it safer and easier to specify the Java^* home path used for the Gradle daemon (background process) execution for your project by referencing your .gradle/config.properties file. This reduces errors related to incompatible Gradle and project JDK versions, since there is now a single source of truth for your Gradle JDK selection.

Starting with Android Studio Hedgehog, new projects will use #GRADLE_LOCAL_JAVA_HOME by default. Existing projects will automatically be migrated to the new macro after a successful sync, unless you're already using a macro like #JAVA_HOME.

[Windows-only] Minimize the impact of antivirus software on build speed

The Build Analyzer informs users if antivirus software may be impacting build performance. This can occur if antivirus software, such as Windows Defender, is performing real-time scanning of directories used by Gradle. Build Analyzer recommends a list of directories to exclude from active scanning, and, if possible, provides a link to add them to the Windows Defender folder exclusion list.

Use Firebase Test Lab devices with Gradle Managed Devices

Gradle Managed Devices can now target Firebase Test Lab devices, and you can utilize it to run your automated tests at scale. Use Gradle Managed Devices to select from a wide range range of both physical and virtual FTL devices, with support for test sharding for accelerated execution time. To use FTL devices, you need Android Gradle Plugin 8.2 with the latest Alpha version of the Firebase Test Lab Gradle plugin. Learn more.

Download Android Studio today!

Now is the time to download Android Studio Hedgehog to incorporate the new features into your workflow. As always, we appreciate any feedback on things you like, issues, or features you would like to see. If you find an issue, please check the known issues and file a bug if needed. Remember to also follow us on X (formerly known as Twitter), Medium, or YouTube for more Android development updates!

*Java is a trademark or registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

30 Nov 2023 6:00pm GMT

Maemo Community e.V. - Invitation to the General Assembly 2023

Dear Member,

The meeting will be held on Friday, December 29th 2023 at 12:00 CET on irc.libera.chat channel #maemo-meeting.

Unless any further issues are raised, the agenda includes the following topics:
1. Welcome by the Chairman of the Board
2. Determination of the proper convocation and the quorum of the General Assembly
3. Acceptance of the annual report for the fiscal year and actions of the Executive
6. Any other business

Requests for additions to the agenda must be submitted to the Board in writing one week prior to the meeting (§ 9.2 of the Statutes).

On Behalf of the Maemo Council, Jussi Ohenoja

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30 Nov 2023 8:52am GMT

The OnePlus 12, launching in China on December 4th, refines the OnePlus 11's aesthetic and improves antenna signal performance and gaming latency.

Come comment on this article: This is our first official look at the OnePlus 12

29 Nov 2023 7:01pm GMT

Posted by Ben Weiss, Senior Developer Relations Engineer

NordVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) app that protects users while they're browsing the web by providing them a more secure and private connection. As a network utility, NordVPN's users deserve a responsive UI, allowing them to set up their protections at a moment's notice. That's why NordVPN developers recently integrated Baseline Profiles, a profile-guided optimization that helps Android developers improve an app's startup and runtime performance using ahead-of-time compilation.

Improving performance with Baseline profiles

As part of its product roadmap for 2023, the NordVPN team wanted to boost the application's performance. Before implementing Baseline Profiles, NordVPN's startup times on Android devices didn't meet the team's standards, prompting them to examine new ways to make the app run better.

After exploring ways to improve its runtime performance and streamline the login process for users, NordVPN developers identified an opportunity to make the app faster using Baseline Profiles. Baseline Profiles lets the Android Runtime (ART) know which code paths to optimize through Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation before an app launches, boosting speed, stability, and overall responsiveness during startup, when navigating through the app, and while viewing content.

"App speed and stability are essential for a better user experience, so we're always looking for new ways to improve NordVPN's performance," said Himanshu Singh, senior Android engineer at NordVPN. "We wanted to speed up the app's load time and make launch and navigation faster than ever."

By applying Baseline Profiles, NordVPN improved its launch speed by an average of 24%. Using tools like Android Vitals, the NordVPN team measured that it had reduced the application's cold start time from 4.3 seconds to 3.2 seconds, the warm start time from 2.7 seconds to 1.8 seconds, and the hot start time from 1 second to 0.7 seconds.

After implementation, NordVPN developers' also noticed that Baseline Profiles made it faster for users to login to the app, improving the user login flow. The login flow is measured from when a user starts an app to when a user is logged into it. Using the Macrobenchmark library to monitor the improvements, the team observed that the NordVPN app runs its login flow 60% faster than before.

Integrating and testing Baseline Profiles is easy

The ease of implementing Baseline Profiles impressed NordVPN developers. The available resources, in-depth documentation, and codelabs from Android allowed them to enhance the app's UX without having to write an extensive amount of code themselves.

Using the Macrobenchmark library, NordVPN developers quickly generated Baseline Profiles for the application. To do this, they used a Gradle managed device, which enabled them to create new profiles without a physical device. Using a Gradle Managed Device also allowed NordVPN developers to create fresh profiles for each app release build on their Continuous Integration platform. Looking forward, NordVPN developers plan to migrate Baseline Profile generation to the official Gradle plugin, which will further automate profile generation.

NordVPN developers combined development workflows to create an integration pipeline, allowing them to test the app under various conditions. Then, the Macrobenchmark library ran Baseline generation tests, pushing the latest Baseline Profiles into the code base.

A quick boost to app quality

After integrating Baseline Profiles into NordVPN's code, its developers saw immediate speed improvements. The engineering team assessed the app's overall speed after finishing the project and found that, beyond improving the app's launch times, applying Baseline Profiles led to a 29% improvement to overall in-app speed.

"We're constantly working to improve app quality, and Baseline Profiles integration has proven to be one of the most successful steps we've taken," said Šarūnas Rimša, product owner at NordVPN. "We're helping users access the services they're entitled to faster. What's not to like?"

Get started

Learn how you can improve your app's performance using Baseline Profiles.

29 Nov 2023 7:00pm GMT

Posted by Sam Bright, Vice President & General Manager, Google Play

Hello everyone,

Since joining the team at the start of this year, I've been continuously inspired by our incredible community of people building apps and games, and it's been my privilege to support your hard work and creativity. In particular, it's been exciting to see you not only identify new user needs, but to develop innovative ways of solving them with your apps and games. This year, our annual Best of Play awards introduced new categories to recognize these achievements, including "Best with AI" and "Best multi-device app and game."

No matter where you are on your developer journey, whether you just published your first app or already reached a global audience, Google Play is committed to being your partner in growth. Here's a look back at some of the key tools, features, and programs we built this year to help you reach your full potential and build a successful business on Google Play.

Check out the video below or keep reading for more details about this year's updates.

New tools and features built in 2023

User growth and engagement:

Monetization:

Privacy and security:

Investing in our app and game community

This year, our Indie Games programs helped businesses of all sizes grow on Play. Through our Indie Games Fund, we awarded $2 million and offered hands-on support to 10 Latin American studios to help them grow their games on our platform. And for mentorship from Google and industry experts, early-career indie developers can apply for the Indie Games Accelerator from now until December 12, 2023.

We're also pushing for greater representation and equity in the developer community by giving $600,000 across 13 nonprofit organizations around the world to support more inclusive programming. For example, we've partnered with Global Game Jam and the IGDA Foundation to host a game jam that helps women across Asia and Latin America launch careers in game development.

And finally, we continued our tour of the world by sharing and celebrating your stories through #WeArePlay. This year, we spotlighted over 260 app and game businesses from Europe, Japan, India and more.

Looking ahead

I'm excited about the future of Google Play, which will see even more updates and improvements to the work we did this year.

For example, you may have noticed that we gave the Play Store a fresh look this year, with more visual components, new video capabilities, and fluid animations, and introduced new ways for people to discover, engage, and re-engage with your apps and games. In addition to new original editorial content and livestream events, we also developed new ways for users to be rewarded for their play, such as with time-bound offers and promotions.

Next year, we'll build on that investment, going deeper to provide more value to users - and, in turn, to your businesses. We're looking to:

As you know, Google Play is more than an app marketplace. We connect people with the experiences they'll love, wherever they are, on whatever device they're using. A big part of this is our continued focus on making it easier for people to find your latest, most relevant app and game content. It also means going beyond the Play Store to deliver this content to people across their devices, when and where it's most relevant.

Once again, I want to thank you for all the hard work you've put into making Google Play the best place for apps and games. I can't wait to see what you build next.

On behalf of all of us at Google Play, happy holidays and best wishes for an amazing 2024.

29 Nov 2023 3:00pm GMT

Here to help you keep your smartphone and laptop powered up is Ugreen with a bunch of charging accessories that are hugely discounted this Black Friday weekend. Whether you are on the hunt for a slim 30W charger, a 200W USB-C Desktop charge, 25,000mAh power bank or even a power station and solar panel combo, […]

Come comment on this article: Save at least 40% on these Ugreen chargers, power banks, and USB-C Hubs this Black Friday weekend

23 Nov 2023 3:13pm GMT

Every year, smartphone brands attempt to launch their flagship models that little bit earlier than they did the year before; Samsung has already scheduled its Galaxy S24 series announcement for mid-January and now we have confirmation that the OnePlus 12 will launch in China a few weeks earlier than usual. In commemoration of its 10th […]

Come comment on this article: The OnePlus 12 will be unveiled on December 4th

23 Nov 2023 2:04pm GMT

Recently there was an large rework to the STB single-file image_resize library (STBIR) bumping it to 2.0. While the v1 was really slow and merely usable if you needed to quickly get some code running, the 2.0 rewrite claims to be more considerate of performance by using SIMD. So lets put it to a test.

As references, I chose the moderately optimized C only implementation of Ogre3D and the highly optimized SIMD implementation in OpenCV.

Below you find time to scale a 1024x1024px byte image to 512x512px. All libraries were set to linear interpolation. The time is the accumulated time for 200 runs.

	RGB	RGBA
Ogre3D 14.1.2	660 ms	668 ms
STBIR 2.01	632 ms	690 ms
OpenCV 4.8	245 ms	254 ms

For the RGBA test, STIBIR was set to the STBIR_4CHANNEL pixel layout. All libraries were compiled with -O2 -msse. Additionally OpenCV could dispatch AVX2 code. Enabling AVX2 with STBIR actually decreased performance.

Note that while STBIR has no performance advantage over a C only implementation for the simple resizing case, it offers some neat features if you want to handle SRGB data or non-premultiplied alpha.

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15 Nov 2023 1:50pm GMT

Bypassing paywalls is a sport for some. And it ain't hard for Desktop Browsers. Just install a addon in your favorite Desktop Browser.

Unfortunately this didn't work on a Android or iPhone phone. Nor on Sailfish OS with its Android emulation. Because over there browsers like Chrome and Chromium don't allow extensions to be installed. Firefox does have some limited support for addons, but it can't open local XPI files. Its addon menu doesn't contain the addon and the addon website for it sees the running browser as incompatible.

Luckily you have Kiwi Browser, which is a Chrome based browser that did not disable extensions to be installed.

Once Kiwi is installed you can go to either chrome://extensions or kiwi://extensions, enable Developer mode and then open the zip file as explained in the Readme.md.

ps. For Sailfish I had to install an older version of Kiwi Browser, as the most recent version doesn't seem to work.

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27 Jul 2023 8:37am GMT

I've mentioned some of my various retronetworking projects in some past blog posts. One of those projects is Osmocom Community TDM over IP (OCTOI). During the past 5 or so months, we have been using a number of GPS-synchronized open source icE1usb interconnected by a new, efficient but strill transparent TDMoIP protocol in order to run a distributed TDM/PDH network. This network is currently only used to provide ISDN services to retronetworking enthusiasts, but other uses like frame relay have also been validated.

So far, the central hub of this OCTOI network has been operating in the basement of my home, behind a consumer-grade DOCSIS cable modem connection. Given that TDMoIP is relatively sensitive to packet loss, this has been sub-optimal.

Luckily some of my old friends at noris.net have agreed to host a new OCTOI hub free of charge in one of their ultra-reliable co-location data centres. I'm already hosting some other machines there for 20+ years, and noris.net is a good fit given that they were - in their early days as an ISP - the driving force in the early 90s behind one of the Linux kernel ISDN stracks called u-isdn. So after many decades, ISDN returns to them in a very different way.

Side note: In case you're curious, a reconstructed partial release history of the u-isdn code can be found on gitea.osmocom.org

But I digress. So today, there was the installation of this new OCTOI hub setup. It has been prepared for several weeks in advance, and the hub contains two circuit boards designed entirely only for this use case. The most difficult challenge was the fact that this data centre has no existing GPS RF distribution, and the roof is ~ 100m of CAT5 cable (no fiber!) away from the roof. So we faced the challenge of passing the 1PPS (1 pulse per second) signal reliably through several steps of lightning/over-voltage protection into the icE1usb whose internal GPS-DO serves as a grandmaster clock for the TDM network.

The equipment deployed in this installation currently contains:

• a rather beefy Supermicro 2U server with EPYC 7113P CPU and 4x PCIe, two of which are populated with Digium TE820 cards resulting in a total of 16 E1 ports

• an icE1usb with RS422 interface board connected via 100m RS422 to an Ericsson GPS03 receiver. There's two layers of of over-voltage protection on the RS422 (each with gas discharge tubes and TVS) and two stages of over-voltage protection in the coaxial cable between antenna and GPS receiver.

• a Livingston Portmaster3 RAS server

• a Cisco AS5400 RAS server

For more details, see this wiki page and this ticket

Now that the physical deployment has been made, the next steps will be to migrate all the TDMoIP links from the existing user base over to the new hub. We hope the reliability and performance will be much better than behind DOCSIS.

In any case, this new setup for sure has a lot of capacity to connect many more more users to this network. At this point we can still only offer E1 PRI interfaces. I expect that at some point during the coming winter the project for remote TDMoIP BRI (S/T, S0-Bus) connectivity will become available.

Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank anyone helping this effort, specifically * Sylvain "tnt" Munaut for his work on the RS422 interface board (+ gateware/firmware) * noris.net for sponsoring the co-location * sysmocom for sponsoring the EPYC server hardware

18 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

Almost one year after my post regarding first steps towards a V5 implementation, some friends and I were finally able to visit Wobcom, a small German city carrier and pick up a lot of decommissioned POTS/ISDN/PDH/SDH equipment, primarily V5 access networks.

This means that a number of retronetworking enthusiasts now have a chance to play with Siemens Fastlink, Nokia EKSOS and DeTeWe ALIAN access networks/multiplexers.

My primary interest is in Nokia EKSOS, which looks like an rather easy, low-complexity target. As one of the first steps, I took PCB photographs of the various modules/cards in the shelf, take note of the main chip designations and started to search for the related data sheets.

The results can be found in the Osmocom retronetworking wiki, with https://osmocom.org/projects/retronetworking/wiki/Nokia_EKSOS being the main entry page, and sub-pages about

• Node Control Unit

• 16x BRI Uk0 Line Card

• 32x POTS Line Card

• Line Measurement Unit

• Shelf

In short: Unsurprisingly, a lot of Infineon analog and digital ICs for the POTS and ISDN ports, as well as a number of Motorola M68k based QUICC32 microprocessors and several unknown ASICs.

So with V5 hardware at my disposal, I've slowly re-started my efforts to implement the LE (local exchange) side of the V5 protocol stack, with the goal of eventually being able to interface those V5 AN with the Osmocom Community TDM over IP network. Once that is in place, we should also be able to offer real ISDN Uk0 (BRI) and POTS lines at retrocomputing events or hacker camps in the coming years.

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

If you have ever worked with Digium (now part of Sangoma) digital telephony interface cards such as the TE110/410/420/820 (single to octal E1/T1/J1 PRI cards), you will probably have seen that they always have a timing connector, where the timing information can be passed from one card to another.

In PDH/ISDN (or even SDH) networks, it is very important to have a synchronized clock across the network. If the clocks are drifting, there will be underruns or overruns, with associated phase jumps that are particularly dangerous when analog modem calls are transported.

In traditional ISDN use cases, the clock is always provided by the network operator, and any customer/user side equipment is expected to synchronize to that clock.

So this Digium timing cable is needed in applications where you have more PRI lines than possible with one card, but only a subset of your lines (spans) are connected to the public operator. The timing cable should make sure that the clock received on one port from the public operator should be used as transmit bit-clock on all of the other ports, no matter on which card.

Unfortunately this decades-old Digium timing cable approach seems to suffer from some problems.

bursty bit clock changes until link is up

The first problem is that downstream port transmit bit clock was jumping around in bursts every two or so seconds. You can see an oscillogram of the E1 master signal (yellow) received by one TE820 card and the transmit of the slave ports on the other card at https://people.osmocom.org/laforge/photos/te820_timingcable_problem.mp4

As you can see, for some seconds the two clocks seem to be in perfect lock/sync, but in between there are periods of immense clock drift.

What I'd have expected is the behavior that can be seen at https://people.osmocom.org/laforge/photos/te820_notimingcable_loopback.mp4 - which shows a similar setup but without the use of a timing cable: Both the master clock input and the clock output were connected on the same TE820 card.

As I found out much later, this problem only occurs until any of the downstream/slave ports is fully OK/GREEN.

This is surprising, as any other E1 equipment I've seen always transmits at a constant bit clock irrespective whether there's any signal in the opposite direction, and irrespective of whether any other ports are up/aligned or not.

But ok, once you adjust your expectations to this Digium peculiarity, you can actually proceed.

clock drift between master and slave cards

Once any of the spans of a slave card on the timing bus are fully aligned, the transmit bit clocks of all of its ports appear to be in sync/lock - yay - but unfortunately only at the very first glance.

When looking at it for more than a few seconds, one can see a slow, continuous drift of the slave bit clocks compared to the master :(

Some initial measurements show that the clock of the slave card of the timing cable is drifting at about 12.5 ppb (parts per billion) when compared against the master clock reference.

This is rather disappointing, given that the whole point of a timing cable is to ensure you have one reference clock with all signals locked to it.

The work-around

If you are willing to sacrifice one port (span) of each card, you can work around that slow-clock-drift issue by connecting an external loopback cable. So the master card is configured to use the clock provided by the upstream provider. Its other ports (spans) will transmit at the exact recovered clock rate with no drift. You can use any of those ports to provide the clock reference to a port on the slave card using an external loopback cable.

In this setup, your slave card[s] will have perfect bit clock sync/lock.

Its just rather sad that you need to sacrifice ports just for achieving proper clock sync - something that the timing connectors and cables claim to do, but in reality don't achieve, at least not in my setup with the most modern and high-end octal-port PCIe cards (TE820).

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT