What’s New In Google’s Android Studio 2.0?

Google on Monday announced a preview of Android Studio 2.0 at the Android Developer Summit. Android Studio is the official integrated development environment for Android application development, based on IntelliJ IDEA.

Among the new features that come with the latest build include Instant Run – a much requested feature that will dramatically improve development workflow. Instant Run will enable users to make changes in code/resources and they’ll update in the app almost instantly. This feature will work on virtually every emulator in use today, virtually every current physical device and virtually every version of Android that has significant use today. Reto Meier also said that with Android Studio 2.0, a preview of a new GPU Profiler has been also included.

Stephanie Saad Cuthbertson, Google Product Manager at Android said, “In the android studio team our goal is to make the IDE delightful and in order for it to be delightful we felt like it had to be not just stable but incredibly stable”.

She explained that in 2.0, there is ADB push speeds that are five times faster with Android Studio Emulator 2.0 than they are in physical device. The team has also completely rewritten the UI.

In addition to faster speeds, 2.0 also supports screen rotation, screen shots, dragging one apk and dropping it on the emulator, resizing the emulator by dragging its side, possibility to emulate GPS location, calls, texts, camera and much more.

“With 2.0, the IDE is designed to help you stay constantly in the flow while you are coding”, Cuthbertson added.

Next she explains what she calls ‘Graphics Intensive Apps’ like maps, games, videos, and such things. For this 2.0 includes a very early preview of New GPU Profiler, which will allow to record and replay the entire GPU stream frame-by-frame.

Cuthbertson added that Android Studio remains open source, free to all.

However, Meier pointed out that these updates are available now in the canary release channel, and recommended to download and run an additional copy of Android Studio in parallel with the current version.