Google rolling out Play Services 5.0, plenty of changes in store

BY Evan Selleck

Published 2 Jul 2014

image Google Play Services 5

Google’s I/O conference may have ended, but the announcements are far from over. Today, the search giant announced that some major changes are coming to their Google Play Services, and that the update to 5.0 is now rolling out to Android devices globally.

The last update to Google Play Services brought it up to version 4.4 back in May of this year, and with it came plenty of additions, like Street View integration, but this is a pretty massive jump. As you can imagine, the list of changes is impressive. So much so, in fact, that Google brought a video along for the ride, just to make sure that the bases get covered.

So, what’s arriving with Google Play Services 5.0? Here’s a rundown, from the announcement:

  • Android wearable services: Google Play services 5.0 introduces a set of APIs that make it easier to communicate with your apps running on Android wearables. The APIs provide an automatically synchronized, persistent data store and a low-latency messaging interface that let you sync data, exchange control messages, and transfer assets.
  • Dynamic security provider: Provides an API that apps can use to easily install a dynamic security provider. The dynamic security provider includes a replacement for the platform’s secure networking APIs, which can be updated frequently for rapid delivery of security patches. The current version includes fixes for recent issues identified in OpenSSL.
  • Google Play game services: Quests are a new set of APIs to run time-based goals for players, and reward them without needing to update the game. To do this, you can send game activity data to the Quests service whenever a player successfully wins a level, kills an alien, or saves a rare black sheep, for example. This tells Quests what’s going on in the game, and you can use that game activity to create new Quests. By running Quests on a regular basis, you can create an unlimited number of new player experiences to drive re-engagement and retention.
  • There’s quite a bit more, and you can check out the full video down below. Considering how much Google announced at this year’s I/O, and how much of it tied to Android in one way or another, these kinds of updates aren’t a surprise in the slightest.

    Are you excited to get your hands on the next major version of Android?

    [via Android Developers]