Gallery Go, GOTA, IANA tzdb 2019b, and GSIs with August SPLs

 

Recently we launched Gallery Go - a smart, offline-first, gallery app designed to address the key pain points users have on entry-level devices and in connectivity challenged environments. 

Starting Nov 4th, 2019, Gallery Go will become a mandatory app for Android Go devices. We will update the GMS requirements accordingly. 

In line with your feedback, Gallery Go is fast, light, and works offline using on-device machine learning to deliver modern gallery functionality to more users on Android Go. You can learn more in our blog post. 

OEMs are encouraged to use Gallery Go as the default gallery app on Android Go devices (that is, setting your default camera to use Gallery Go for review of last capture via ACTION_REVIEW intent). Whilst not a requirement, default gallery integration helps deliver the best user experience with Gallery Go. We also provide private OEM APIs for additional customization and format support. 

For more information on using Gallery Go as the default gallery app, please reach out to gallery-go-partner-support@google.com and CC your Google TAM. 

 

GOTA now has support for showing a reminder dialog that prompts users for download/installation approval if they have a pending update. GOTA dashboard provides controls for when the reminder dialog initially appears, how long the "Remind me later" button persists, and the frequency at which the dialog appears for users who have dismissed the dialog. Visit the help center for more details.

Other updates:

• Both GOTA dashboard and user guide are now also available in Simplified Chinese (based on browser locale).

• “What’s New” page added to the user guide. Please bookmark this link for future announcements about changes to GOTA.

 

 

We have updated the time zone data in the Android source code for IANA tzdb release 2019b.

For a full summary of the changes since 2019a, please see the IANA announcement 2019b.

 

The changes identified affecting Android users now or in the future are:

• Brazil cancelled DST and will stay on standard time indefinitely

• Population of 209 Million people, with 87% of Android market share

• Palestine's 2019 spring transition was March 29 at 00:00, not March 30 at 01:00. Guess future transitions to be March's last Friday at 00:00.

  • Population of 4.68 Million people

Notes:

• Brazil previously observed DST so devices with older versions of tzdb will switch to DST in November and switch back next year. This will be disruptive to users in Brazil as their local time will be incorrect (+1 hour) during the old DST period.

Here’s where we made the changes:

• Android Q: 2019b will be included in the official AOSP release

• Android P platform updates in AOSP pie-dev:

  • external/icu/

    1. Update tzdb version to 2019b

  • system/timezone/

    1. Update tzdb version to 2019b

• Android O-MR1 platform updates in AOSP oreo-mr1-dev:

  • external/icu/

    1. Update tzdb version to 2019b

    2. Backport to fix xlocale.h issue

  • system/timezone/

    1. Update tzdb version to 2019b

 

Note: Time zone updates are incremental changes. To apply the 2019b changes to a source tree, it must first be incrementally updated to version 2019a.

 

 

We have released  a new version of the GSIs with the latest SPLs for VTS testing.  

These GSIs:

• Have been released for Android 8.0, 8.1, and 9.0

• Contain the latest August SPLs

• Should be used with the existing VTS versions: 9_r9, 8.1_r8, and 8.0 r11

There are no changes to the VTS package in this release. All of the latest GSI binaries can be found on the downloads page.