Looks like someone at Google finally came to realize that the Eclipse IDE is “not so good”. That is to say, it’s bloated, slow and the user interface is a mess.

As an alternative the well-known Java IDE IntelliJ could already be used for Android development in the past. Now Google has released a preview of the new Android Studio which is based on IntelliJ, too. It features a preview of layouts for different smartphones and tablets. Android Studio makes use of a new build system called Gradle.

You can find the “Early Access Preview” of Android Studio download here. There’s also a short guide for migrating from Eclipse to Android Studio. To migrate projects you should first export files from Eclipse and generate Gradle build files (that requires at least version 22.0 of the ADT plugin). Then, in Android Studio import the project with “Create project from existing sources”.