This past week, Google rolled out the fourth developer preview for Android N. It brings us one step closer to the final release – which is slated for some time in Q3. As is the case with developer previews, there are plenty of things that are broken, or just not working properly. We’ve already seen that Hangouts is a big mess in this latest developer preview. Now, for those that use Android Auto, it appears that Google Maps is having issues.
Reports floating around include the fact that Google Maps isn’t able to launch, when using a device running the latest developer preview, in the car. Others report that navigation just isn’t working. So it appears to be a bit wonky, hopefully it doesn’t affect your usage of Android N too much. Additionally, it appears that Android engineers already knew about the problem before Android N Developer Preview 4 was released. According to the support page: “This issue will be fixed in the next update to Google Maps (9.31), expected in the coming weeks.”
Keep in mind that this is indeed a “developer preview”, so we’re expecting broken things, bugs and a lot of other unstable issues. That’s just the nature of a developer preview. Luckily, not a whole lot of people are using Android N and Android Auto, so it doesn’t affect a ton of people. If you do use Android Auto – specifically, Google Maps – and you are thinking about running the latest Android N Developer Preview on your device, you may want to think twice. At least until the latest version of Google Maps is available. And according to the release notes, it shouldn’t be all that far out.
Android N should be released some time around September or October. We’re looking forward to getting the next version of Android, even though we’ve been using it for a few months through the developer previews here. It’s a fairly large update to Android, even though most of it is under-the-hood. When the new version of Android is available, there will also be announcements for new Nexus hardware, which is always a very exciting time.
By:
Review: Emerging Market Formulations &
Research Unit, FLAGSHIP RECORDS.
For The #FacebookTeam