It took a while for it to get here, but make no mistake about it – Android Studio 2.0 is now officially out. Google’s official development tool spent almost four months in beta, with the developing team wanting to make sure most of the bugs and hang-ups are ironed out. Android Studio 2.0 is now out of beta and ready to wow Android app developers with new capabilities for faster app building.
Probably the most awaited feature of Android Studio 2.0 update is Instant Run, which Google has been working on and teasing us for the last year. With Instant Run, developers are able to see how a change in their code affects the app almost instantly. No more need to re-compile and re-install the APK. Pretty cool.
Additionally, Android Studio 2.0 brings a device emulator that is hyped as “three times faster” than any device emulator before it. This is all a result of Android Studio now being able to take advantage of multi-core CPUs. Google says running the emulator will typically be faster than testing on a real device as the process also taps into the new Instant Run feature that fires up a new virtual device for each test build.
Why does this matter in the whole scheme of things? Well, it matters because the quality of tools available to developers greatly affects what type of apps they put out. Pretty logical, right? The new features in Android Studio 2.0 greatly enhances the developers’ handle on working with multiple devices and versions of Android – which if you ask them is actually the main challenge in building for Android in the first place. Better tools, better apps.
SOURCE: Google
