To extend the capabilities of Android even further,
several new services for Android are available.
Google
Cloud Messaging for Android
Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is a service that lets
developers send short
message data to their
users on Android devices, without needing a proprietary sync solution.GCM
handles all the details of queuing
messages and delivering them efficiently
to the targeted Android devices. It supports message multicasting and can reach up to 1000
connected devices simultaneously with a single request. It also supports
message payloads,
which means that in addition to sending tickle messages to an app on the
device, developers can send up to 4K of data.
Google Cloud Messaging is completely free for all developers and sign-up is easy. See the Google Cloud Messaging page for registration, downloads, and documentation.
App
Encryption
Starting with Android 4.1, Google Play will help protect
application assets by encrypting all paid apps with a device-specific key
before they are delivered and stored on a device.
Smart
App Updates
Smart app updates is a new feature of Google Play that
introduces a better way of delivering app
updates to devices. When
developers publish an update, Google Play now delivers only the bits that have changed to devices, rather than the entire
APK.
This makes the updates much lighter-weight in most cases,
so they are faster to download, save the device’s battery, and conserve
bandwidth usage on users’ mobile data plan. On average, a smart app update is
about 1/3 the size
of a full APK update.
Google
Play services (coming soon)
Google Play services helps developers to integrate Google services such as authentication and Google+
into their apps delivered through Google Play. Google Play services will be
automatically provisioned to end user devices by Google Play, so all you need
is a thin client library in your apps.
Because your app only contains the small client library,
you can take advantage of these services without a big increase in download
size and storage footprint. Also, Google Play will deliver regular updates to the services, without developers
needing to publish app updates to take advantage of them.
For more information about the APIs included in Google
Play Services, see the Google Play Services developer page.
ARTICLE
BY
A.NIVETHITHA
FINAL
YEAR IT
