Getting Started with Android Pie

Mark McLemore

Google recently released Android Pie for developers to enhance their apps and build new experiences with. Previously, Microsoft released an Android 9.0 Preview for Xamarin.Android and as of today, you can download the stable support for Android Pie inside Xamarin.Android 9.0 with Visual Studio 2017 15.8 and Visual Studio for Mac 7.6.

New Features of Android Pie

There are a ton of new updates since the Preview. Take advantage of adding the following features to your apps now!

Display Cutout Support

Many of the newest Android devices with edge-to-edge screens have a Display Cutout (or “notch”) at the top of the display for camera and speaker. The Android Pie update allows you to customize the Display Cutout behavior for how your app will display all of it’s contents.

Notifications Enhancements

This new update also introduces the following enhancements to improve the messaging experience:

  • Notification Channels (introduced in Android Oreo) now support the blocking of channel groups.
  • The Notification System has three new Do-Not-Disturb categories. Prioritizing alarms, system sounds, and media sources.
  • In addition, there are seven new Do-Not-Disturb modes that can be used to suppress visual interruptions. Modes such as badges, notification lights, status bar appearances, and launching of full-screen activities.
  • A new Person class has been added to represent the sender of a message. Use of this class helps to optimize the rendering of each notification by identifying people involved in a conversation. This includes their avatars and URIs.
  • Notifications can now display images.

Indoor Positioning

The Android Pie update provides support for IEEE 802.11mc (also known as WiFi Round-Trip-Time or WiFi RTT), which makes it possible for apps to detect the distance to one or more Wi-Fi access points. Using this information, take advantage of indoor positioning with an accuracy of one to two meters. On Android devices that provide hardware support for IEEE 801.11mc, your app can offer navigation features such as location-based control of smart appliances or turn-by-turn instructions through a store:

Learn More

Check out our Android Pie Sample Project that accompanies our Android Pie Documentation.

For more information about the Android Pie, be sure to browse through the official Android blog.

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