Alongside the announcement of the Android 8.1 Oreo beta, Google is finally taking the wraps off of Android Studio 3.0, introducing a range of new features for its integrated development environment (IDE).
Promised back at the company's I/O 2017 developer conference, there's now support for the Kotlin language. Google says that it's an "expressive and concise language that is interoperable with existing Android languages and runtimes". You can use it in as little or as much of your app as you want.
There's improved support for Java 8 language features as well. And if you're not building your app for phones, tablets or wearables, there's now support for Android Things, the OS for IoT devices.
Developers will now be able to add Instant Apps to their project, rather than full development of Instant Apps, which was made available earlier on this year. Google also says that build speed has been improved for apps.
The system images also now include the Google Play Store, which should allow developers to perform end-to-end testing, and "provides a convenient way to keep Google Play services up-to-date in your Android Virtual Device (AVD)." You'll also find OpenGL ES 3.0 support in the Emulator.
And those are just some of the highlights from the changes that are now available. You can check out the full changelog here.
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