Taking the final wrapper off of Android 7.0 Nougat

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android 7.0 Nougat

Today, Android 7.0 Nougat will begin rolling out to users, starting with Nexus
devices. At the same time, we’re pushing the Android 7.0 source code to the
Android Open Source Project (AOSP), extending public availability of this new
version of Android to the broader ecosystem.

We’ve been working together with
you over the past several months to get your feedback on this release, and also
to make sure your apps are ready for the users who will run them on Nougat
devices.

What’s inside Nougat

Android Nougat reflects input from thousands of fans and developers like you,
all around the world. There are over 250 major features in Android Nougat,
including VR Mode in
Android. We’ve worked at all levels of the Android stack in
Nougat — from how the operating system reads sensor data to how it sends pixels to
the display — to make it especially built to provide high quality mobile VR
experiences.

Plus, Nougat brings a number of new features to help make Android
more powerful, more productive and more secure. It introduces a brand new
href="https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/android-7.0.html?utm_campaign=android_launch_android7.0nougat_082216&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog#jit_aot?utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">JIT/AOT
compiler to improve software performance, make app installs faster,
and take up less storage. It also adds platform support for href="https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics/index.html?utm_campaign=android_launch_android7.0nougat_082216&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Vulkan,
a low-overhead, cross-platform API for high-performance, 3D graphics. href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/multi-window.html?utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Multi-Window
support lets users run two apps at the same time, and href="http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/notifiers/notifications.html?utm_campaign=android_launch_android7.0nougat_082216&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog#direct?utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Direct
Reply so users can reply directly to notifications without having
to open the app. As always, Android is built with powerful layers of security
and encryption to keep your private data private, so Nougat brings new features
like File-based encryption, seamless updates, and href="https://developer.android.com/training/articles/direct-boot.html?utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Direct
Boot.

You can find all of the href="https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/index.html?utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Nougat
developer resources here, including details on behavior changes and new
features you can use in your apps. An overview of what's new for developers is
available href="https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/android-7.0.html?utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">here, and
you can explore all of the new user features in Nougat href="https://www.android.com/versions/nougat-7-0/">here.

Multi-window mode in Android Nougat

The next wave of users

Starting today and rolling out over the next several weeks, the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player,
Pixel C, and General Mobile 4G (Android One) will get an over-the-air software
update to Android 7.0 Nougat. Devices enrolled in the href="https://www.google.com/android/beta">Android Beta Program will also
receive this final version.

And there are many tasty devices coming from our partners running Android Nougat, including the upcoming href="http://www.lgnewsroom.com/2016/08/new-lg-v20-to-be-worlds-first-phone-to-launch-with-android-7-0-nougat/">LG
V20, which will be the first new smartphone that ships with Android Nougat, right out of the box.

With all of these new devices beginning to run Nougat, now is the time to
publish your app updates to Google Play. We recommend compiling against, and
ideally targeting, API 24. If you’re still testing some last minute changes, a
great strategy to do this is using href="https://developer.android.com/distribute/engage/beta.html?utm_campaign=android_launch_npreview_061516&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Google
Play’s beta testing feature to get early feedback from a small group of
users — including those using Android 7.0 Nougat — and then doing a staged
rollout as you release the updated app to all users.

What’s next for Nougat?

We’re moving Nougat into a new regular maintenance schedule over the coming
quarters. In fact, we’ve already started work on the first Nougat maintenance
release, that will bring continued refinements and polish, and we’re planning to
bring that to you this fall as a developer preview. Stay tuned!

We’ll be closing open bugs logged against Developer Preview builds soon, but
please keep the feedback coming! If you still see an issue that you filed in the
preview tracker, just href="https://source.android.com/source/report-bugs.html">file a new issue
against Android 7.0 in the AOSP issue tracker.

Thanks for being part of the preview, which we shared earlier this year with href="https://medium.com/google-developers/n-as-in-so-early-it-s-not-named-yet-f06bbde8c390#.uqdm4w8hi">an
eye towards giving everyone the opportunity to make the next release of
Android stronger. Your continued feedback has been extremely beneficial in
shaping this final release, not just for users, but for the entire Android
ecosystem.