Articles & Tutorials

Google has a workaround to enable paid apps (and other apps that use Google Play's forward-lock mechanism) on Android Wear.

Here's an updated tutorial from Lars Vogel on using Mockito in Android unit tests.

This tutorial goes over writing a program for Android Wear physical devices. This app will allow the user to select a time interval on the Wear, and then set off a vibration on the user's wrist when the timer goes off before repeating.

In a recent presentation on Android Wear, one challenge was to cast a Samsung Gear Live watch to the audience, so that they can understand the basic working of the device.

In this second article, Mark Allison looks at an alternative mechanism for achieving a round cornered image without using a second image.

Dealing with the DEX methods limit on Android and Google Play Services.

Action Bar's navigation elements are being deprecated entirely, the other elements of the Action Bar have been segmented into a separate, embeddable Toolbar class, and even the concept of action items with an overflow have been encapsulated into the ActionMenuView - there's even the ability to set a Toolbar as the Activity's Action Bar.

Jake Wharton describes the changes in the latest support-v4 library.

Here's a closer look at ART, the new Android runtime to replace Dalvik.

One of the highlights from Google I/O this year was the Device Lab built to show developers how their site looks across the multi-device web. It was a really cool thing to see all kinds of different sites working on phones, phablets, tablets, computers and even TVs. Here's how it was created.

The Double Encore team has written a nice blog post about digging into ActivityManagerService. They show how applications are killed and for what side effects you have to watch out.

Roman Nurik shares what new Android L APIs were used in the Google I/O 2014 app.

Design

The main difference from the official Google sticker sheets is that the interface elements are summed up in one document (Kit) rather than scattered across multiple files. The Google documentation is also about guidelines, this Kit is focused on UI elements for your design.

Jobs

We’re looking for Android Engineer's to help us build one of the best Android apps on the market. You should have experience delivering great apps and get excited by writing performant code for mobile devices. This is a full-time position based in San Francisco, CA.

Ustwo are looking for an Android developer with inspiring skills and passion to help deliver ground breaking products and services for both our clients and for our own IP. You have the opportunity to be yourself whilst being part of a talented, cross discipline team and can deliver real value.

At Venmo, we build products that make payments easy. We view engineering as a craft, and want our software to be as elegant as the end user experience. We're looking for Android engineers to help make our app become the easiest way to pay anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Libraries & Code

9elements has released some code that shows how to develop a custom watch face for Android Wear.

Here a little gist to get the heart rate on the Samsung Gear Live.

Custom view for circular images in Android while maintaining the best draw performance

EazeGraph is an Android library for creating beautiful and fancy charts. Its main goal was to create a lighweight library which is easy to use and highly customizeable with an "up-to-date"-look.

Cute view animation collection.

Tavon Gatling has released an unofficial Base WatchFace Activity that helps you to control some additional lifecycle events (like screen dimming etc).

Tavon Gatling has released a simple app that uses an Android Wear device to connect to LIFX lights on a local network and turn them off and on.

News

Here's a quick look at the cool new stuff from Google for games developers.

Tools

Gradle task to strip unused packages on Google Play Services library.

Videos

See what functional reactive programming looks like, how it fits into Java, what use cases it addresses and real-world examples of how it can become a tool in your application development.

App of the Week

If you're interested in the Watch Face for Android Wear - but you don't want to compile it from GitHub. Check out the final APK on the Google Play Store.