What’s new in Google Play services 8.3

And to make signing in easier across devices, whether you use Google Sign-In or still have password-based authentication, the ( to populate an entire sign-up form with name, email address, and profile picture with one tap, or even direct the user into a sign-in or sign-up flow intelligently based on their email address. Better yet, if the entry the user picked matches an account on the device, Google can provide a verified email address in the hint, which you can use to skip email verification and authenticate the user if your system can support and for more details.

App Invites is a technology that enables your users to share your app with people they know. If you build using App Invites, Google Play services 8.3 has an update that will make coding much simpler. Now, you can use the AppInvite.AppInviteApi.getInvitation() method. This will set up a ResultCallback that you can use to launch your deep link activity, drastically simplifying your code.

The Play game services Player Stats API also gets an update. The latest version now includes a new signal for the probability that a player is about to churn. Developers can use this signal to offer special promotions to improve retention. For example, a developer could provide a discount on a power-up for players that are at risk of churning.

Finally, if you are developing for wearables, you’ll know that battery life and optimization of power usage are critical in having a great user experience. With Google Play services 8.3, we’ve updated the , but for something such as updating your contacts, you could tolerate some delay. Non-urgent DataItems may be delayed for up to 30 minutes, but you can expect that in most cases they will be delivered within a few minutes. Low priority is now the default, so , allowing listeners to only receive a subset of changes on both phones and watches. Listeners registered in the Android manifest should be filtered to only receive events that require launching the . This reduces the need for listeners to filter out uninteresting events, making applications and the system more efficient.

That’s it for this release of Google Play services. To learn more, visit the Google Developers site.