More than 6,000 developers from all over the world attended Google I/O 2015 event from 28-29 of May. The two-day event which took place in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, was filled with inspirational talks, announcements of new developer products, hands-on learning, and a lot more. Google I/O extended events allowed developers from across the world as well as fans of the latest products to watch and participate in Google’s biggest event of the year.
The schedule of the 8th annual Google I/O among other things included:
- Building a real-time app in 5 minutes with Firebase
- Building fitness apps on wearable devices
- Finding your way with the Google maps SDK for IOS
- Fingerprint and payments APIS
- The next generation mobile web
- What’s new in Google Play services?
- Smarter approaches to app testing
- Video chat for web, IOS, and android
- Apps for kids and families: get discovered
- Gaming on android TV
- Introduction to high-performance NDK audio
- Google cloud messaging 3.0
- What’s new in android?
- Battery performance and tooling
Here are some of the things announced during the event:
Android M
The new powerful version of Android has an improved battery life and streamlined permissions for apps which make mobile operating system easier to use and also includes Android Pay which allows users to use their phone as a digital wallet.
“Having a supercomputer in our pocket is now second nature; today more searches on Google come from mobile than from desktop computers, and by some estimates there are more mobile devices than there are people on the planet. For evidence of the mobile revolution, look no further than the growth of Android. There are now more than one billion Android users worldwide—a long way from when we launched the first Android phone back in 2008. And there are 4,000 unique Android devices on the market, from more than 400 manufacturers and over 500 carriers,” wrote Google Senior Vice President of Products Sundar Pichai on Google’s official blog.
Google Photos
A new Photo app which makes it easier to organize and share pictures was also launched. Google Photos offers its users unlimited photo storage and allows them to sort their images automatically and save a lot of time.
Google Jump and Google Maps
Google Jump makes it easier for people to record and share virtual reality videos on YouTube while Google Maps offline allow users to take their maps wherever they go and use them without needing an internet connection.
Updated Google Cardboard
An update of Google Cardboard was also announced. “Now there are more than 500 Cardboard apps for film, games, tours and learning, and more than 1 million Cardboard viewers have been shipped. Today we announced iOS support for developers and debuted Google Expeditions, which lets students take virtual trips with Cardboard to places like the moon and underwater,” according to Pichai.