Google engineers talk about Android fragmentation - Tecmundo

(Image source: ArsTechnica)

conference Google I / O performed during this week in San Francisco, in the United States, there is a space just for Google present their novelties. Focused on developers, the company also promotes a series of panels and meetings where visitors can chat directly with programmers and executives.

One of the panels made with the presence of 11 engineers of the Android development team that for 40 minutes answered several questions from the audience. Check out some of the most interesting chat.

What could have been done differently from the start?

For senior engineer Dianne Hackborn, the team should have more control over the applications. A great example is the provider settings, in which applications are run and just write for them. “This is something we should not have done,” he said.

the team is working to combat Android fragmentation?

“We thought a lot about it,” said David Burke, director of engineering for Android. He explained that many silicon vendors requesting open source code to break it and create your own board support packages (BSP), to make the hardware compatible with the software.

To expedite this process, the team made the code for Android platform on more layers. Thus, if a provider needs to modify the code, you can do this on a separate layer without affecting the entire OS. Added to this, there is a legion of users running Gingerbread today because it requires less memory.

“We’re looking for ways to make Android smartphones more efficient for input to help improve this situation,” he added.

Butter Project: OS smoother

Announced at Google I / O last year, Project Butter (“butter” in English) is an initiative that aims to make the operating system is running “softer”, with fewer delays and crashes. According to Burke, the company has made much progress with Jelly Bean, but there is still much to be done.

“It can be hard trying to do the same experience happen on all devices. Because of this, we are working with a focus on hardware as the Nexus 4, which already have high-performance GPU, “he explained. The team still thinks that every new line of code written can not negatively impact the performance of the operating system.