Google launches ‘Android Experiments’ to show off open source apps for Android and Android Wear

BY Evan Selleck

Published 12 Aug 2015

Google's Android Experiments

Apps are ridiculously important these days, something that Google is all too familiar with. Now, in line with its Chrome Experiments site, the company is launching a brand new way to focus on experimental apps coming down the line.

The site is called “Android Experiments,” and it does exactly what the name implies: Showcase experimental applications for Android (and Android Wear) that use experimental technology, interfaces and aesthetics. What’s more, the applications that Google shows off on the site will all be open source, so developers can take a peek under the hood to see how they work, and hopefully build off those ideas.

As it stands right now, there are about 20 different experimental applications to look at on the site, including what’s known as IOIO Plotter, which functions as an “easel-mounted wall-style plotter,” and it’s powered by Android tablets that can draw on flip charts. There are also different experimental Android Wear watch faces, too.

Android Wear experiments

Google says the current batch of apps was built using tools like the Android SDK and NDK, Android Wear, the IOIO board, Cinder, Processing, OpenFrameworks and Unity. “Each project challenges in small and big ways how we think of the devices we interact with every day,” Google design advocate Roman Nurik (whose own Muzei app is included in the collection) and Google Creative Lab member Richard The write today.

The experiments will not get their own dedicated collection within the Google Play Store, unfortunately, but the experimental apps can be searched for, and downloaded from it. And for the developers that want to submit their own forward-thinking apps to the Experiments site, Google is now accepting submissions.

[via TechCrunch]