Android L keyboard pops up on Google Play, then swiftly disappears

After a brief appearance on Google Play, a popular Android L keyboard derived from Google's preview firmware has been removed from the Google app store.

How long does it take for Google to remove an app from its store when it's rather similar to its own unfinished OS? Apparently 10 days — in which time nearly one million fans hungry for anything Android L installed the keyboard app from Google Play.

The Android L keyboard's appearance on the app store in late June was thanks to the preview edition of the new OS that Google released the day prior, allowing developers to begin testing some of its new features and to build apps that meet its 'material design' overhaul.

While developers have broken out many apps from the Android L preview, the keyboard was one of the few that worked and carried the look of the 'material design' scheme.

XDA TV producer Shen Ye, the developer behind the free L keyboard that appeared on Google Play, promised it would run as a standalone app on any Android device above 4.0 without requiring users to root their devices.

According to a post from Ye, Google yanked the app for being in violation of Google's Developer Distribution Agreement.

And the developer had a message for anyone who's criticised him for using the keyboard from the L preview.

"To those being pedantic and saying "it's not your keyboard, you took it off the L preview", I reply that this is my (and chrisch's) modification of the keyboard, which contains bug fixes, standalone ability (so no root), and modified so Material is default on versions below l-preview. Also, most people would rather trust an apk I publish than one off a random xda page."

According to Ye, the app was downloaded 800,000 times before "my keyboard got Scroogled".

But for Android devices Google Play isn't the only store users can install apps from and if users still want it they can find it on other sites. Of course, this means adjusting security settings so that the device can install apps from other sources.

Android L Tests Show A Massive Improvement In Battery Life

Google unveiled the successor to Android 4.4 KitKat at its I/O last week, and apart from the major UI changes, said it had made several tweaks to improve a device's battery life. 'Project Volta' as it has been christened includes a new API that schedules minor tasks better and ART, which is a much more efficient app runtime.

Now that the Android L developer preview has been out for some time, ARS Technica has really put Google's latest software through its paces, and done tests to see if all those battery saving claims are actually true. The verdict? Running a device on Android L saw a 36% improvement in battery life when compared to KitKat.

Those results are pretty similar to what many XDA users found, while there were also the odd cases where battery life was significantly reduced. Those hiccups were most likely beta stage bugs, as some users reported WhatsApp contributing to 15% of their battery use.

While nothing is a 100 per cent certain at this stage and there are a lot of bugs that need to be ironed out on Android L, we're certainly excited to see the improvements Google's all-new mobile OS brings us.