After long months of work, Google has just announced that Android Studio 2.0 comes in stable version. Like you must know, Android Studio is the official IDE recommended for Android Development by Google. It is based on IntelliJ Idea. Android Studio has several advantages like the fact it is made mainly for Android Development and built in coordination with Android platform. So, it supports all of the latest and greatest APIs unveiled by Android team.

logo_androidstudio

Where as Eclipse with ADT plugin was a great solution, Android Studio is now the fastest way to build high quality and performant apps for the Android platform. It includes smartphones and tablets but also Android Auto, Android Wear and Android TV. All you need is packaged in standard on Android Studio : code editor, code analysis tools, emulators and other monitoring tools.

Android Studio 2.0 includes a lot of new features that will make life of Android developers easier. This is the top 5 :

1/ Instant Run

When you develop an application and make some changes on your code, you woud like to see instant changes on the running application. This is now possible with Instant Run feature. To achieve that, a lot of work has been made to accelerate build / run from the VM and let hot swapping. It will save time every day to developers.

Instant Run feature is available with new buttons and works with any Android Device or emulator running API 14 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or higher :

instan_run_buttons
When you click on the specific Instant Run button, it will analyze the changes you made and determine the best way to deploy your new code in the fastest way. For some type of changes, an activity or app restart will be required but be sure that the whole process of build and run should be generally much faster than before. It’s probably the best new feature offered by Android Studio 2.0 !

2/ Android Emulator

Android has improved the Android Emulator and the ADB tool. Now, Android Emulator runs 3x faster than the previous emulator. You can push apps and data 10x faster to the emulator than to a physical device.

Google Play Services are not included in the official Android Emulator which is a great addition. It will let you to test out more API functionality directly on the emulator. Android Emulator User Interface has also been improved with new controls :

emulator

 

3/ IntelliJ 15 Update

Android Studio 2.0 is built on the last version of the Jetbrains’ IDE. Always good to continue to keep Android up to date with IntelliJ coding platform. The new features offered by IntelliJ 15 are listed here : https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/


4/ GPU Debugger Preview

Google makes a great work to add a lot of tools for previewing on Android Studio. In that version, Google has added a GPU Debugger Preview that will make life easier for those that develops OpenGL ES based apps or games. It will let to see each frame and the GL state directly on Android Studio. GPU stream could be captured and analyzed to make some diagnosis on GL rendering issues.

gpu_debugger

5/ App Indexing Code Generation and Test feature

App Indexing is become an important feature for developers to promote the visibility of their app in Google Search. Now, Android Studio offers a feature to auto-generate URLs directly in the IDE. Even better, it’s possible to test the generated URLs within the IDE.

app_indexing_tool

 

Conclusion

Android Studio 2.0 is important step for Google to help developers to make better Android apps easier. So, don’t hesitate go on the official Android developer site and get Android Studio 2.0 or get it from your Android Studio existent installation by updating it.