Android announced the final Beta update for Android 12 to help developers with testing and development.
Since platform stability was achieved with Beta 4, all app-facing surfaces are final, including SDK and NDK APIs, app-facing system behaviors, and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces.
“Today’s Beta 5 release has everything you need to try the Android 12 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. Just enroll any supported Pixel device to get the update over-the-air. To get started developing, set up the Android 12 SDK,” Dave Burke, VP of engineering at Android wrote in a blog post.
Flutter 2.5 released
Flutter 2.5 includes important performance and tooling improvements to help users track down performance problems in their apps.
The new version also includes new features such as full-screen support for Android, more Material You (also called v3) support, updated text editing to support switchable keyboard shortcuts, a new, more detailed look at your widgets in the Widget Inspector, and more.
The Flutter 2.5 release is also deprecating support for iOS 8 as announced in September 2020. Additional details on the new version are available here.
Databricks closes Series H funding
Databricks announced that it closed a $1.6 billion Series H round which puts the company’s current valuation at $38 billion.
The company said it will use the funding to accelerate innovation and adoption of the lakehouse as the data architecture’s popularity across data-driven organizations continues to grow at a rapid pace.
“We are delighted to once again include our most strategic partners in this latest round of funding, as it validates our vision for an open and unified approach to data and AI on any cloud,” said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO of Databricks. “As we jointly make more organizations successful in their move to the cloud and accelerate adoption of the lakehouse architecture, we’re excited to see these partnerships – and the ecosystems formed around them – continue to grow for decades to come.”
