Android Dev Summit 2022 Sunnyvale October 2022

It was a great experience attending the Android Dev Summit 2022 in the Bay Area, covering all the interesting topics around building excellent experiences for the endusers. Such as the Modern Android Development, which can help extend apps across the many Android devices as well as across all screen sizes from the small watch, to large screens like a tablet or foldables.




Google offers lots of execellent developers tools such as Android Studio, Kotlin, Jetpack libraries and Google & Play Services. It is easy to build high quality apps across all Android devices. The Jetpack Compose is the main focus here at the Summit, which is Google recommended UI framework for new Android applications. Google want Compose to help take advantage of the entire Android ecosystem of devices. The recently relased Compose for Wear OS 1.0 version is now the recommended way to build UI for Wear. Not too surprising, Google also announced at the Summit the alpha release of Compose for Android TV. Components like featured carousel and immersive list are available, with more components coming soon.



Google put a lot of foucs on the watch devices, with small screen and personal. Google has been working closely working with Samsung to develop Wear OS since last year and Google is seeing 3X as many devices activations as before, thanks to the new Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and Google Pixel Watch devices. More than 20 UI components specifically designed for Wearables, with built-in material theming and accessibility. Google also sharing updated templates for Wear OS in Android Studio, as well as a stable Android R emulator system image for WearOS. The Todoist apps talked about their increased install growth rate by 50% since rebuilding their app for Wear 3, and Outdooractive reduced development time by 30% using Compose for Wear OS.



There are some amazing hardware–like Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4, Lenovo P12 Tab Pro, and Google’s upcoming Pixel Tablet for the large screens. Google made it easier to test app on the large screen in Android Studio Electric Eel, including resizable and desktops emulators and visual linting to help adhere to best practices on any sized screen. Google also provide more design and layout guidance for these devices. The Concepts app, which enables stylus interactions like drawing and shape guides for ChromeOS and stylus devices, saw a 70% higher usage for tablets compared to phones!




I also got the chance to try out the latest Android Auto features live at the Summit. Android Auto has come a long way since it was first introduced in 2014. It has gone through multiple design iterations and is now found globally on over 150 million cars. Android Auto is getting smarter and gaining deeper Google Assistant integration. When starting a trip, the driver can easily share a link with the arrival time with friends. It is now possible to use YouTube on vehicles while they are parked, as well as some third-party video streaming apps, such as Tubi and Epix Now. I didn't get the chance to ask about the new Google Cast support which was suppose to be available end of 2022.


This is just the first day of Android Dev Summit in 2022 - there are additional sessions to focus on the Form Facdtors and the Platform. I will share more details at that time.