
What's new in Android 4.3 - sindhiparsani
http://developer.android.com/about/versions/jelly-bean.html
======
napoleoncomplex
This is more developer related, but one of the biggest news is a backwards
compatible ActionBar in the official support library. All that's left to say
is a big, enormous thank you to Jake Wharton for keeping us all sane until
now.

Edit: The video about the ActionBarCompat is available:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TGgYqfJnyc#at=20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TGgYqfJnyc#at=20)

Seems largely identical to ABS in its implementation, which makes sense.

~~~
kumarm
Absolutely ActionBarCompat is the best addition to 4.3. Thanks for the video
link.

~~~
luke_s
Um, its worth nothing that ActionBarCompat is not an addition to 4.3. Its an
addition to the support library. If you include the support library in your
project and you can use features from 4.3, such as fragments, and the action
bar all the way back to android 1.6. The support library is a backport of
modern functionality.

This is part of googles approach to addressing fragmentation on the Android
platform.

~~~
ZoFreX
Small correction, the support library which has ActionBarCompat only goes back
to 2.1 (each version has a number representing the API version it supports, in
this case v7)

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notatoad
>You can access notifications through new APIs that let you register a
notification listener service and with permission of the user, receive
notifications as they are displayed in the status bar...You'll be able to
launch any intents attached to the notification or its actions, as well as
dismiss it from the system, allowing your app to provide a complete user
interface to notifications.

wow. that should have some interesting possibilities.

~~~
randallu
Hello smartwatches!

~~~
arpit
And Google Glass

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wavesounds
"Nexus 7 should receive the update today, other devices in the coming week"

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/android-4-3-will-be-
availab...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/android-4-3-will-be-available-
for-nexus-7-nexus-4-nexus-10-and-galaxy-nexus/)

~~~
dholowiski
Maybe they changed it since your comment, it now says ". All of these devices
will receive the over-the-air update today."

Seems highly unlikely to me. I haven't gotten the update on my Galaxy Nexus
yet.

~~~
jordanthoms
'Recieve' there means that the OTA is out and being deployed to some devices,
not that it's been rolled out and made available to everyone. If you want the
update sooner, you can download the factory images and flash it. (which have
already been released).

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samstokes
On the "actual user-facing feature" front:

 _Android 4.3 adds built-in support for Bluetooth AVRCP 1.3... In addition to
exposing playback controls on the remote devices connected over Bluetooth,
apps can now transmit metadata such as track name, composer, and other types
of media metadata._

I've been waiting for that for car audio (iOS already supports it).

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nileshtrivedi
So 4.3 fixes neither the ad-hoc WiFi issue #82 nor the audio latency issue
#3434. I will continue to pass as those are the deal breakers for me.

It’s amazing – these two have been pending for more than 4 years. Google
hasn’t cared to even comment on the former while thousands of users beg them
to:
[https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82)

~~~
Zikes
It would appear that both were assigned on Friday, so that is a good sign.

~~~
darklajid
You mean 'on Wednesday last month'?

I'm not invested in either of these bugs, I don't think I care about
them/their result, but I think you failed to parse the month in that tracker?

~~~
Zikes
Oh, yep. Saw Jun, read Jul. Still fairly recent, though.

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danso
Not to start a flame war here...but what is the likelihood that newer devices
still on 4.1 will be bumped to 4.3, on the reasoning that third-parties waited
until 4.3 to make the upgrade? Or does it become increasingly unlikely that
any upgrade will happen?

I have a Sprint HTC One...which was released in 4.2's latter days but still
had 4.1...wondering if an upgrade will ever happen

~~~
Zikes
That seems to be largely a carrier issue, and unfortunately the best solution
seems to be to root the device and install/update stock Android manually.

This is why Google is moving a lot of Android's functionality into
applications, which can be updated easily via the Google Play Store.

~~~
luke_s
I should also put a shout out to the compatibility library and google play
services - these mean app developers are not tied to having to code against
the latest version of android to use new features.

Essentially all Android updates do now is to change some of the core OS
plumbing. The big changes from 4.1 to 4.2 were rendering speedups. 4.3 seems
to be new versions of the bluetooth stack and open GL.

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sologoub
There seems to be a significant push for more video/entertainment/proprietary
content related stuff. Anyone familiar with this?

"Modular DRM framework

To meet the needs of the next generation of media services, Android 4.3
introduces a modular DRM framework that enables media application developers
to more easily integrate DRM into their own streaming protocols, such as MPEG
DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP, ISO/IEC 23009-1)."

Wonder if I'll finally see Amazon Instant Video on vanilla-android... probably
not.

~~~
untog
Thing is, Amazon Instant is already on Google TV. So I don't think there is
any technical reason for them to not implement it.

~~~
dangrossman
Amazon Instant on Google TV is just a shortcut to launching Chrome pointed at
the Amazon site where the videos play in Flash. It's not a real Android app,
not on my box at least.

~~~
jdboyd
Amazon Instant on some Google TV devices is the real Amazon Instant app.
However, the devices supported by Amazon Instant are all ones that offered
DRM.

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gergles
> The /system partition is now mounted nosuid for zygote-spawned processes,
> preventing Android applications from executing setuid programs. This reduces
> root attack surface and likelihood of potential security vulnerabilities.

Well, that sounds great. It's almost like they're trying even harder to
prevent people from having control over their device.

~~~
glhaynes
It's also like they're trying to reduce root attack surface and potential
security vulnerabilities.

~~~
Nux
I believe current Fedora is also setuid free, possibly other distros, too.

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untog
TL;DR: not much.

It's smoother, which is a great thing. But in terms of actual features, the
only one I'm looking forward to is being able to use Wi-Fi positioning while
I've turned off the ability to connect to Wi-Fi. That is to say, I'm not very
excited about this release.

~~~
brokenparser
There are lots of things in the new version, but just because your random wish
isn't there it's "not much"? Give me a break. Besides, you can already do that
with DroidWall or any other firewall in the play store.

~~~
untog
_but just because your random wish isn 't there it's "not much"?_

Er, where did I say that? My "random wish" was one of the new features they
announced that I am glad they included.

There are plenty of new features in 4.3, but they're all developer-centric.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course, but it means it isn't so
exciting for many people. Especially as few people can afford to target these
new features right now, given that their potential market of 4.3 users is
tiny.

~~~
tadfisher
Future Android updates probably won't be as exciting because Google is
migrating most of their system apps to Play. In the past, a system update
might have brought new features to Maps, or to Google Search, while now those
are updated on a more frequent (and less buzzworthy) schedule.

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stevewillows
The nice thing about restricted profiles is that it should allow us to create
a really simple 'Kid mode'.

~~~
eliben
Yes, especially limiting in-app-purchases seems like a very useful feature for
letting kids use your tablet without worrying too much.

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dannyr
Bluetooth Smart Support is a big deal.

It's going to make it easier for hardware devs to develop Bluetooth apps.

~~~
JeremyNT
One such piece of hardware being Fitbit, which only presently supports some
Samsung devices (since Samsung apparently got tired of waiting and hacked in
their own support). Perhaps we'll finally get full Fitbit support on Android
devices running 4.3.

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znowi
As an owner of Nexus 4, the only feature I'm looking for is a reduced battery
usage :) They provide optimizations for the location API, but I suspect that
the more prominent _performance_ features will end up draining battery even
faster :)

~~~
king_jester
Some of the performance changes for handling graphics should help with
battery life since they will be more efficient in using the CPU and GPU. Some
of the Android engineers covered this at I/O 2013:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQZFaec9NpA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQZFaec9NpA)

~~~
slacka
I too have been waiting impatiently for Google to fix the audio latency. Great
to see behind the scenes of how the Android engineers are tackling this issue.
Surprised this is primarily a Linux scheduling issue and of course priority
inversion. Between "fast path" and matching buffers/sample rate, looks like
we're almost there. Great watch! Thanks for posting that link.

Any android developers working on audio should check out:
[https://code.google.com/p/high-performance-
audio/](https://code.google.com/p/high-performance-audio/)

------
LeeHunter
Still no low latency audio? I wonder if Android will ever be a useful device
for serious musicians.

~~~
jordanthoms
This is something which is being worked on, but it's a complex problem and
takes time to improve. Android 4.3 has halved the audio latency on the Nexus 7
(2012) and Nexus 4. See here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c)

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Goosey
> Wi-Fi scan-only mode is a new platform optimization that lets users keep Wi-
> Fi scan on without connecting to a Wi-Fi network, to improve location
> accuracy while conserving battery.

Out of all the features this is the one I am most excited about.

------
joaomsa
From my time working with SELinux on the desktop I'm curious to see what they
do with it eventually, now running it in permissive audit mode doesn't do much
at all.

I'm wondering if the plan is to eventually have each app ship with a policy
file (doubt it)? Use a targeted policy to only confine certain apps chosen by
the user with corresponding policies and run everything else unconfined
(minimizes breakage)? Run the entire dalvik vm in a separate confined domain?
Just leave it there as an option for enterprise and government customers who
would really take advantage of flexible interface for writing access policies?

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Nogwater
I missed it in the presentation. Did they say when this will ship to Nexus 4?

~~~
Lewisham
Rolling out today, is what I read on The Verge. However, that doesn't mean
you'll get it today; rollouts are usually so slow that you can wait weeks.

~~~
Zikes
The Check Now button in About Phone seems to be something of a placebo button,
as well. In the past I've got around this by going to Settings->Apps->Google
Services and clearing the cache and killing the process. That will force an
actual check by pressing the Check Now button.

Of course, if your phone isn't scheduled to receive it yet then you'll still
come up bupkis, like I have thus far.

~~~
jordanthoms
I don't think anyone has gotten the OTA update yet. Once someone has, the zip
will get posted and then we can all update from that. Or, you can flash the
factory image which is out now but you'll lose your data on the phone.

~~~
cageface
Just checked for the update on my N4 and got it immediately. I'm in SE Asia,
if that makes any difference.

------
ville
Is Google lacking imagination? This is the third version with the same name.

I'm missing the times when every release was a new sweet thing.

~~~
rahoulb
I suspect it's part of their strategy for deflecting from the "fragmentation"
issue - "what version of Android does your phone run? Jelly Bean? Snap!"

I also reckon that they will start releasing bits of the OS via the Play
Store, bypassing the manufacturers and carriers (as they are already doing
with the standard keyboard).

~~~
king_jester
They do that with Google Play Serivces
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.gms))
already. The things 4.3 has w.r.t. bluetooth, opengl es support, etc. are
probably really difficult to ship independently.

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rcchen
It seems that only Nexus devices are getting the update today, and not the
Samsung/HTC Play Edition phones. It will be interesting to see when those two
devices get the update; in the meantime, not all Play devices are made equal?

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stevedub
Did they say when the source code will drop?

~~~
jamesprudente
It's there.
[https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/android-4.3_r2.1)

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darxius
I'm new to the Android world and this is the first update I've seen. When
should I expect an update pushed to my phone? What does it depend on? I have
the Galaxy S4 so I assume Samsung has to make some modifications to the
version to support some stuff?

~~~
keeperofdakeys
The image is modified heavily by Samsung. Besides their custom UI, they need
to write/integrate custom drivers for the hardware in the phone. As for time,
it could be a few months before it's updated.

This is the advantage of Nexus phones, as Google ensures that the manufacturer
has a release ready, and that previous phones are updated (within reason).

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artagnon
Running CyanogenMod nightly, because it's the closest I can get to open
source: I love getting updates in the form of git SHA-1s every few days.

I wonder if upstream Android will ever take to a rolling-release approach.

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ippa
Nice to see they're working on rendering-performance. I bought the prev Nexus
7 but returned it some days later. The jittery scrolling and constant microlag
drove me crazy.

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vegasbrianc
One more reason to have a Nexus device is to take advantage of these updates
right away.

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StavrosK
Does anyone know if there will be images for the Nexus Experience S4 and HTC
One?

~~~
jordanthoms
There surely will, they said in the announcement that updates for GPE devices
are coming 'very soon'.

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, I'm so conflicted... Do I keep Sense and the IR blaster/Zoe, or do I get
stock with all the improvements and saner UI?...

~~~
comex
Reposting a dead reply to your comment:

> There are already patches for the IR blaster in CM10.1 (or 10.2 now). You
> have to cherrypick them though, as of two weeks ago they weren't merged yet.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh, thanks! I imagine CM is pretty much stock, no? It might even have PDroid
patches, I'll have to look. I wonder how stable it is.

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knodi
New master key?

