Google Play services is used to update Google apps. This component provides core functionality like authentication to your Google services, synchronized contacts, access to all the latest user privacy settings, and higher quality, lower-powered location based services.
Google play service provides a brand new sign-in experience to the mobile app developers who want to build their app. Play services v8.3 adds a new sign-in process that allows apps to display a single dialog box with a list of Google accounts on the device. When a user picks an account, it automatically grants basic profile access.
You can easily integrate your basic google account into your app with the new GoogleSignIn API. In the previous version of play services we need to re-establish a connection to change the the GoogleApiClient sign-in-state. This difficulty has been removed in the this new version.
New account creation has been simplified with new sign-in-improvements in 8.3. Whenever a user picks an account to sign up with, the developers can pull all the common details to begin creating an account like email address, name and profile photo. This will save the time of the user to enter the details that could be pre-populated for them.
Additionally, if a user enters an email address that matches an account on the device, Google automatically confirms the authenticity of it so the app developer won’t have to perform an email verification step – you know, when you sign up and get an email a minute later asking you to click a link to prove the account is really yours.
The new flushLocations() method in 8.3 allows you to return any batched locations immediately. This eliminates the need of waiting for batching to occur.
The new AppInvite.AppInviteApi.getInvitation() method will set up a ResultCallback that you can use to launch your deep link activity.
App Invites now have a getInvitation() method that will set up a callback that streamlines launching a deep link activity.
Player Stats API issues a new signal when the players has abandon a game. This will help the developers to offers free bonus points and help them to pass through the tough points so that the player keeps on playing the game.
8.3 provide wearable users with a great experience i.e. good battery life and efficient power consumption. Google has developed tools to help better sync data between Android apps and wearables. Using the tool, developers can mark which data is ‘urgent’ and sync it immediately, or leave it as non-urgent, in which case it syncs within 30mins. The idea is to ensure that data communication between the two devices is kept to a minimum, without missing anything important.