Google has released the 1.4 update to the Android Studio stable release channel.  Android Studio 1.4 adds a new design tools, performance monitors, and developer services to the development environment.
A number of new design tools have been added to Android Studio, starting with the new Vector Assets Studio. With Android Studio 1.4, Google are making the process of importing SVG images or Material icons much easier.
Android Studio 1.44 offers backwards compatibility for your vector assets. Once you have a vectorDrawable image in your res/drawable, Android Studio will automatically generate raster PNG images for API level 20 and below during build time.
This means you only need to update and maintain your vector asset for your app project and Android Studio can take care of image conversion process.
Android Studio 1.4, comes with a preview of a Theme Editor. This first version of the Theme Editor is focused on editing and updating the material theme colors (colors.xml) in your app project.
This release also includes new performance monitors. These include the GPU monitor to watch GPU performance, as well as the network monitor, to measure your app’s netowork usage.
Android Studio 1.4 also has a new developer service in the form of Firebase. Firebase includes things like data storage, static hosting and user authentication services.
To help with the visual design of your apps, app templates have been updated to include the Android Design Support Library alongside the AppCompat Support library.
With Android Studio 1.4, developers can also validate pps on the new Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P screen sizes.
Developers can update their current version of Android Studio by going to Help > Check for Update on Windows and Linus, or Android Studio > Check for Updates on OS X.
