In the new version of Android N Google will switch to OpenJDK

    Welcome to our readers on the iCover Blog Pages ! Sometimes adjustments are made to the measured course of events and business plans of transatlantic mega-corporations, which even leading industry analysts are not always able to predict. It seems that a similar situation has been and continues to be with Google, which announced the transition in the upcoming version of Android N to the OpenJDK platform. With a high degree of probability, this event is associated with the patent litigation with Oracle, which is in the active stage, in the latest lawsuit of the latter, although Google representatives themselves refused to give official confirmation to this.

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    In December last year, Google announced the start of sales of the Pixel C tablet computer. In order to popularize the product, the development team turned to the Reddit resource, where they organized a dialogue with potential customers in a question / answer format. During the discussion, the developers touched on the topic of the expected new version of Android N, partially opened the curtain of secrecy and let it slip that the multi-window mode should appear in the new firmware. Here it is worth recalling that rumors about Google’s plans for such an innovation appeared before the release of Android 6.0.

    In addition, during the discussion, the developers casually mentioned that they were working to integrate DisplayPort support through the USB Type-C connector, although they did not prudently ensure that this functionality was present in Android N. It is very likely that the emergence of multi-window mode and DisplayPort support will make it possible to use devices running Android as a full-fledged PC, similar to the Continuum function in Windows 10 Mobile.

    “We are working on a lot of innovations for“ N ”. Of course, we would like you to know about them yesterday. But then the very fact of surprise would disappear. As for the multi-window mode, now it is under active development, ”said Andrew Bowers, head of Google’s Consumer Technology Development Division. So, all the details about the specifics of these innovations that appeared in Android N will be known to us only during the Google I / O 2016 developer conference.

    But, the possibility of the appearance of an analogue of the Continuum function and the multi-window mode in the updated Android N is far from the only and not the most ambitious surprise that Google promises. The patent battles that unfolded between Oracle and Google, which is now known for sure, entailed a transition from the Open Source implementation of Apache Harmony in current versions of the application to the OpenJDK (open version of the Java Development Kit) in the upcoming version of Android N.

    As it follows from time to time, Often conflicting information, Google began preparing for such a transition at the end of February 2015. Now the company's plans have been officially confirmed, as described in more detail in an article after an interview with company representatives, VentureBeat resource :

    "... Update on December 30: Google followed up today to clarify some of the details the company explained to us before we wrote this article. As a result, the headline has been corrected to more accurately reflect the story. While Google is moving away from its own implementation (using Apache Harmony-based libraries) to use OpenJDK libraries as its foundation for the standard Java libraries, the company is still making changes to OpenJDK to make it work on Android. As a result, future versions of Android will continue to contain parts of Google's “own implementation,” just based on OpenJDK. "

    “In the next version of Android (N), we intend to abandon the proprietary Java programming interfaces (APIs) in favor of OpenJDK, which Google experts have been working on for quite some time, have made a significant contribution and intend to work in this direction in the future,” the representative said Google is the official version of the reason this decision was made. According to Google officials, the transition to the OpenJDK open platform will occur regardless of the court’s decision. This will allow Google not to fear new lawsuits in the future and simplify the application development process.

    It is premature to give an unambiguous assessment of how the now obvious transition to OpenJDK will affect the system. Most likely, such an outcome will be positively accepted by the absolute majority of software developers and will remain almost unnoticed by ordinary users. The opinion that the transition to the OpenJDK platform is directly related to litigation with Oracle, which is developing so far in favor of Google, the company declined to comment.

    Sources: androidcentral.com , phonearena.com , codenameone.com , android.googlesource.com .



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