Android Dev Summit Is Coming!

If you’re an Android junky then you’re probably still coming off of this years Google I/O high.  We saw some really cool stuff we can leverage in our apps to create great user experiences.  But the development fun is far from over.  It’s already time to mark your calendars for another big upcoming development conference: Android Dev Summit 2019.

Last Year’s Summit:

Last year at Android’s annual developer conference we saw some big changes.  These included things like App Bundles in place of old APKs to reduce the size of your app.  On average app sizes were decreased 8% and some saw much bigger changes (30+ percent!). The idea behind an App Bundle is to only download the resources needed for your specific phone/version instead of downloading everything and then using what you need.  We’ll actually be going into detail on it in another post soon.

That was a big size change, but a big code change was focused around Jetpack.  Another topic we’ll dive into further with some tutorials if you haven’t applied it yet is updating your legacy support libraries to AndroidX. Basically your app functions the same way, but moving forward things are a lot cleaner on the Android support library!

What’s Coming This Year?

Those are some good topics that you should definitely be leveraging in your apps today, but the purpose of this post is to ask what may be coming this year.  And if Google I/O is any indicator of it, then the answer is a lot.  There’s not an official roster of topics posted yet, but we’ll likely be seeing deeper dives into some of the topics covered at I/O such as Android Q gestures and dark mode. And now with Kotlin as the preferred language for Android development I’m sure we’ll see some technical dives into what’s happening under the hood.

Along with some of these unique sessions come other perks for those of you attending in person.  There will be more hands on experiences with product demos, and you’ll be able to meet with members of Android’s team and discuss topics in more detail.  If you’re interested in attending then here’s a huge plus: ITS FREE!  Yep no purchase necessary for a ticket, but you do haver to be accepted by invite, so there are no guarantees.  Still, applications are open until August 15^thso I’d highly recommend applying!

We’re Almost There:

There are a plethora of changes that could get whole sessions focused around them (permission changes, internal app sharing, optimizations).  And if you want to make sure you’re up to date on it then keep an eye on our page or on the official Android Dev Summit page.  If you can’t make it in person (Cali isn’t just around the corner for some of us), then don’t worry.  All the sessions will be live streamed on the site as well.

What are you most excited about for Android Dev Summit 2019? Let us know in the comments below!