[APK Teardown] Google Maps v8.2 Contains First Signs Of Possible 3rd-Party Plugin Support And “I Am Here” Location Picker

“I Am Here”

Google Maps is pretty good at figuring out where we’ve gone; between GPS, Wi-Fi, and even things like BLE-based iBeacons, it’s possible to pinpoint our locations just about everywhere, even inside of buildings. Still, there are times that even the latest technology can get confused, and that’s where we can lend a hand. Google is working on a new interface that will allow users to pick clearly declare their presence at specific stores, monuments, or just about anything else Google has in its database.

These strings point to a fairly straight-forward interface that covers the basic interaction of showing a user where Maps thinks they are, but offering ways to change locations as needed. Aside from some fairly insignificant bits, there aren’t any dedicated layout files or images among the resources, and it’s clear that the interface is constructed by code. There are also a few pre-loaded locations, but they could be meant either as filler for a user tutorial or -more likely- just for testing.

Developer Gallery

While digging through the apk, I came across a lot of new code in a folder named “devgallery.” Most of the class names and variables are obfuscated, so there’s relatively little to go on, but two class names remained intact: GalleryConfigurationFragment and DeveloperGalleryFragment.

There are no unique resources of any kind referenced by this code, not even strings – they’ve all been hard-coded. In fact, all of the interface elements are constructed entirely in code, including custom handling of different resolutions and pixel densities. It’s not really clear if this has been done because the feature is still in early development, if it’s necessary to account for dynamic content, or maybe the developers are just trying to make this code less obvious to prying eyes (cough)(cough).

Among the several hard-coded strings, many of which are obviously filler, I notice an obscene number of typos, misspellings, and even a couple amusing word substitutions. I sincerely doubt the author of this code meant for the text to be taken seriously, and probably wanted his or her fellow Googlers to get a couple of laughs. Naturally, I had to honor the contribution by sharing the joke. (Note: I left out a few strings that were too innocuous to to be meaningful. Bolded words deserved a tad more attention.)

There are also sample strings for different locations, which happen to include identical directions:

Some of the longer filler (lorem ipsum) strings also contain embedded tags like this:

These are the embed tags present in the text, so far:

• getTitle()
• getDetails()
• getSnippetText()
• getReviewerInfoText()
• getReview()
• getLabel()
• getButtonOneText()
• getButtonTwoText()

Naturally, there are several labels and sample info to fill up the interface for testing purposes:

Wrap-Up

That’s it for this Teardown. The stuff we’re seeing here probably raises more questions than it answers, but it’s awesome to see some big stuff popping up so soon after Google I/O. Keep an eye out and we’ll have more for you soon!