LIVE FROM APPS WORLD EUROPE 2014, LONDON: App developers here at the show discussed the merits of the latest version of Android, Lollipop, with caution expressed about some new features.

Discussing the new ‘material design’ framework, which gives the UI a three-dimensional look and feel, including shadow and animated transitions between apps and menus, Michael Thomsen, product lead for car listings publisher Auto Trader, said: “One thing I’m looking to find out is how underpowered devices are going to deal with it.”

“We need to make sure we do the right thing by our users to make sure everyone has a good experience,” he added.

Scott Potter, head of engineering at newspaper publisher News UK, commented that he didn’t think there would be a big rush to use the material design framework in organisations where branding is a big consideration.

He explained that around half of News UK’s audience is quite conservative, so might not respond well to a radical overhaul of the look and feel of apps.

As a result, his team are likely to test material design in a few of its less-used apps to gauge user feedback.

Valentin Kravtsov, Android specialist at Hailo, said the company plans to adopt material design as it will help in its bid to continue growing its user base.

Kravtsov added that the flexibility of the new Gradle building system in Android Studio has been a “blessing” for Hailo as it needs to build between 10 and 15 versions of its app to cater for different markets.

Meanwhile Andri Kristinsson, mobile apps product manager for SlideShare, said the staged rollout capability brought in with Android Lollipop is useful as it enables developers to test apps with a small subset of users before rolling features out more widely.

The newly-introduced ability to use Google Groups to segment users for testing was praised in general, although Auto Trader’s Thomsen said that he’d like to see Google “make that journey easier”.