Android Lollipop, 5.0

Misteri di balik Android L terungkap. Google akhirnya memilih nama Lollipop untuk sistem operasi Android terbarunya itu. Berbeda dengan pesaingnya yang mengumumkan mobile OS terbaru dalam sebuah acara besar, pengumuman nama Android 5.0 Lollipop ini dilakukan Google hanya melalui blog resminya.

Nama ini sedikit berbeda dari tradisi nama Android sebelumnya yang menggunakan nama hidangan penutup seperti KitKat (4.4), Jelly Bean (4.1), Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0), Honeycomb (3.2), Gingerbread (2.3), dan versi-versi lain yang sudah hadir lebih dulu. Pasalnya, Lollipop adalah nama permen, penganan yang bisa dinikmati kapan saja.

Dijelaskan Google dalam blognya, nama Lollipop dipilih untuk menggambarkan dunia saat ini ketika banyak orang berinteraksi  secara online dengan berbagai perangkat yang ukuran layarnya berbeda – mulai dari smartphone, tablet, hingga TV. Dengan Lollipop, Google ingin membuat pengguna Android merasa nyaman menggunakan perangkat yang berbeda namun tetap saling terhubung.

Banyak kelebihan yang ditawarkan Android 5.0 Lollipop. Yang paling diunggulkan adalah pengalaman yang tetap sama ketika pengguna berpindah perangkat dengan ukuran layar yang berbeda-beda. Berkat desain yang disebut Material Design, semua konten di Android Lollipop merespons sentuhan dan suara pengguna dengan lebih intuitif.

Lollipop juga memberikan tingkat personalisasi yang lebih baik, sehingga pengguna bisa mengatur siapa saja yang bisa mengakses perangkatnya. Misalnya, notifikasi apa saja yang bisa kita terima saat sedang rapat dan hanya notifikasi penting yang akan ditampilkan di lockscreen.

Satu hal lagi yang menarik adalah peningkatan efisiensi daya baterai. Google meningkatkan fitur battery saver yang sudah ada sehingga baterai sebuah perangkat bisa bertahan sampai 90 menit lebih lama. Fitur ini tentu sangat berguna karena pengguna tidak perlu khawatir baterainya kehabisan daya ketika jauh dari colokan listrik.

Android 5.0 Lollipop ini segera hadir bersamaan dengan perangkat Nexus 6, Nexus 9, dan Nexus Player. Perangkat generasi sebelumnya seperti Nexus 4,5,7,10, dan edisi Google Play akan segera hadir dalam beberapa minggu yang akan datang.

Nexus 6 akan meneruskan eksistensi Nexus 5 yang dirilis oleh LG tepat setahun yang lalu, pada Oktober 2013. Apakah kemunculan Nexus 6 akan menurunkan harga Nexus 5 di Indonesia? Kita tunggu saja.  

Vidio Promosi Android Lollipop

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October 16, 2014

Collaborative features & adds new formatting, Google Docs for Android

Google has been updating its apps quite vigorously in recent weeks, and the Google Docs for Android app has been treated to yet another update. After recently being optimized for use on tablets and larger screens, Google Docs for Android now better captures the needs of users looking to work in groups.

The best part of the update is that Google Docs finally feels like an app rather than just a wrapper of the mobile site. It might still rely on the web app for all we know, but the app doesn’t feel as limited as it did in the past. There’s a new user interface for quickly adding collaborators, deleting, and making formatting adjustments. Docs can toggle rich text formatting for bold, italicize, or underline text, among other things. Users can also change the layout of documents to add bullets, numbers, and indentation.

Docs now supports real-time collaboration when multiple people work on the same document. The app has long supported updating of documents with multi-user access, but the latest version displays changes within seconds of being made. So, as the demo video below illustrates, the best man at a wedding can prepare his speech on a tablet while groomsmen and bridesmaids on their phones proofread or provide suggestions. In other use-cases, workers at conferences can make changes to a document and see the edits made by employees back at the office or on-site somewhere else.

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February 23, 2012

Jelly Bean, Released Soon

The low use of the newest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) in the smartphone and tablet device seems to make Google move fast to soon release the next version of Android.

Google is rumored to be launching Android 5.0, named "Jelly Bean" in the second quarter of 2012 or sometime in June.

As reported by Digitimes that gets information from a distributor based in Taiwan, the launch of the "Jelly Bean" caused by the absorption of Ice Cream Sandwich has failed to meet original expectations.

Until February 2012, Ice Cream Sandwich is used only about one percent of the existing phones and tablets.

One of the new phones that use the Galaxy Ice Cream Sandwich is the Nexus, at the end of last year.

Although, several months ahead Ice Cream Sandwich is expected to be widely used by other Android devices, especially when some mobile vendors release new devices at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona later this month.

While the Android version of the most widely used is the Android Gingerbread (from version 2.3.3 to 2.3.7) which is used by 58.6 per cent of the existing Android devices.

The launch of Android OS 5.0 is also referred to as the presence of Windows 8 Microsoft will be released in the third quarter of 2012.

Android "Jelly Bean" but can be used for smartphones and tablets, Google is also going to design it as an operating system on the notebook and netbook.

Actually Google already has an operating system for notebooks, namely Chrome. However, the notebook with Chrome (Chromebook) is also not as good as Google's original estimate.

Therefore, Google will design the "Jelly Bean" ready for use in notebooks, to compete with Windows 8.

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February 21, 2012

ObjectAnimator - Animation in Honeycomb

In previous exercises, we have demonstrate some effect of android animation. In Android 3.0, Honeycomb, ObjectAnimator was added. It's a example show how to implement animation using ObjectAnimator, also compare with animation using Animation.

Refer to the video, the upper button (Animator Button) animate using ObjectAnimator. The lower button (Animation Button) animate using TranslateAnimation. You can see, Animation change the visual only: user cannot click on the lower button (Animation Button) to trigger the OnClickListener(). The actual button is still in the original position defined in main.xml, so user have to click on the original space to trigger it. For the upper button animate using ObjectAnimator for Honeycomb, user can click on the button on the shown position.

package com.exercise.AndroidObjectAnimator;

import android.animation.ObjectAnimator;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.animation.Animation;
import android.view.animation.AnimationSet;
import android.view.animation.TranslateAnimation;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.Toast;

public class AndroidObjectAnimatorActivity extends Activity {
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        Button animatorButton = (Button)findViewById(R.id.animatorbutton);
        Button animationButton = (Button)findViewById(R.id.animationbutton);
        
        ObjectAnimator objectAnimatorButton
        = ObjectAnimator.ofFloat(animatorButton, "translationX", 0f, 400f);
        objectAnimatorButton.setDuration(1000);
        objectAnimatorButton.start();
        
        AnimationSet animSetAnimationButton = new AnimationSet(true);
        TranslateAnimation translateAnimAnimationButton
        = new TranslateAnimation(
         Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
         Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 1f,
         Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
         Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0);
        animSetAnimationButton.addAnimation(translateAnimAnimationButton);
        animSetAnimationButton.setDuration(500);
        animSetAnimationButton.setFillAfter(true);
        animationButton.setAnimation(animSetAnimationButton);
        
        animatorButton.setOnClickListener(new Button.OnClickListener(){

      @Override
      public void onClick(View arg0) {
       Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), 
         "Animator Button Clicked", 
         Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
      }});
        
        animationButton.setOnClickListener(new Button.OnClickListener(){

      @Override
      public void onClick(View arg0) {
       Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), 
         "Animation Button Clicked", 
         Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
      }});
    }
    
    
}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:orientation="vertical" 
    android:background="#303030">

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="@string/hello" />
    <Button
        android:id="@+id/animatorbutton"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Animator Button" />
    <Button
        android:id="@+id/animationbutton"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="Animation Button" />
</LinearLayout>

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February 15, 2012

Implement Animation using Java code

This exercise have the same output as last exercise "Implement swiping page effect using GestureDetector and ViewFlipper", with animations implemented using Java code instead of XML.

Remove /res/anim folder and the XML animation files.

Modify AndroidViewFlipperActivity.java, implement AnimationSet animSetFlipInForeward, animSetFlipOutForeward, animSetFlipInBackward and animSetFlipOutBackward; to replace animFlipInForeward, animFlipOutForeward, animFlipInBackward and animFlipOutBackward.

package com.exercise.AndroidViewFlipper;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.GestureDetector;
import android.view.GestureDetector.SimpleOnGestureListener;
import android.view.MotionEvent;
import android.view.animation.Animation;
import android.view.animation.AnimationSet;
import android.view.animation.OvershootInterpolator;
import android.view.animation.TranslateAnimation;
import android.widget.ViewFlipper;

public class AndroidViewFlipperActivity extends Activity {

ViewFlipper page;

  AnimationSet animSetFlipInForeward;
  AnimationSet animSetFlipOutForeward;
  AnimationSet animSetFlipInBackward;
  AnimationSet animSetFlipOutBackward;

  /** Called when the activity is first created. */
  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
      setContentView(R.layout.main);
    
      page = (ViewFlipper)findViewById(R.id.flipper);
    
      animSetFlipInForeward = new AnimationSet(true);
      TranslateAnimation translateAnimFlipInForeward
      = new TranslateAnimation(
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 1f,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0);
      animSetFlipInForeward.addAnimation(translateAnimFlipInForeward);
      animSetFlipInForeward.setDuration(500);
      animSetFlipInForeward.setInterpolator(new OvershootInterpolator());
    
      animSetFlipOutForeward = new AnimationSet(true);
      TranslateAnimation translateAnimFlipOutForeward
      = new TranslateAnimation(
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, -1f,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0);
      animSetFlipOutForeward.addAnimation(translateAnimFlipOutForeward);
      animSetFlipOutForeward.setDuration(500);
      animSetFlipOutForeward.setInterpolator(new OvershootInterpolator());
    
      animSetFlipInBackward = new AnimationSet(true);
      TranslateAnimation translateAnimFlipInBackward
      = new TranslateAnimation(
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, -1f,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0);
      animSetFlipInBackward.addAnimation(translateAnimFlipInBackward);
      animSetFlipInBackward.setDuration(500);
      animSetFlipInBackward.setInterpolator(new OvershootInterpolator());
    
      animSetFlipOutBackward = new AnimationSet(true);
      TranslateAnimation translateAnimFlipOutBackward
      = new TranslateAnimation(
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 1f,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0,
       Animation.RELATIVE_TO_SELF, 0);
      animSetFlipOutBackward.addAnimation(translateAnimFlipOutBackward);
      animSetFlipOutBackward.setDuration(500);
      animSetFlipOutBackward.setInterpolator(new OvershootInterpolator());
    
  }

  private void SwipeRight(){
   page.setInAnimation(animSetFlipInBackward);
 page.setOutAnimation(animSetFlipOutBackward);
 page.showPrevious();
  }

  private void SwipeLeft(){
   page.setInAnimation(animSetFlipInForeward);
 page.setOutAnimation(animSetFlipOutForeward);
 page.showNext();
  }

  @Override
public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) {
 // TODO Auto-generated method stub
   return gestureDetector.onTouchEvent(event);
}

SimpleOnGestureListener simpleOnGestureListener
  = new SimpleOnGestureListener(){

 @Override
 public boolean onFling(MotionEvent e1, MotionEvent e2, float velocityX,
   float velocityY) {

  float sensitvity = 50;
  if((e1.getX() - e2.getX()) > sensitvity){
   SwipeLeft();
  }else if((e2.getX() - e1.getX()) > sensitvity){
   SwipeRight();
  }
 
  return true;
 }
  
  };

  GestureDetector gestureDetector
= new GestureDetector(simpleOnGestureListener);
}

Main.xml, same as last exercise, refer to "Implement swiping page effect using GestureDetector and ViewFlipper".

Download the files.

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February 13, 2012

Sega discounts three, Android games for Valentine’s Day

If you are still undecided what to get your significant other this Valentine’s, we don’t exactly have the ideal solution today, but you can start off by following our advice. And our advice would be to go for one of the three Sega titles for Android discounted starting tomorrow.

First off there’s Sonic CD, the very popular original title of the Sonic series, redesigned and refreshed especially for your Android gadgets. The classic, but fun arcade game will be made available for four days for 2.99 dollars, which is a whole two bucks less than its current price.

The second title to go on a more than welcomed sale is the latest title in the Sonic series, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1. The game we ourselves reviewed and praised just a couple of weeks ago will be made available starting tomorrow, February 11, and through February 14, at 23:59, for just $1.99 (discounted from $3.99, which is its price today).

These two together would be a perfect gift (or at least a perfect part of a gift), as far as I’m concerned, especially considering that Sonic 4 Episode 2, optimized for Tegra 2 and 3 powered gadgets, is expected to hit the market in just a couple of months.

The third and last Sega title to have its price slashed is a rather mystery for us American (and European, for that matter) Android users, called Super Monkey Ball 2: Sakura Edition.

I for one have heard of the original Super Monkey Ball arcade game, but am yet to spot it on the Android Market. On the other hand, our Japanese readers will be happy to find out that this special ”Sakura” Edition of the game is an exclusive title for their market and will be available for 72 hours for as less as 99 cents.

A dozen of roses, a box of chocolates, a romantic dinner, a couple of Sega Android games and you’re all set, wouldn’t you say?

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February 11, 2012