Rejoice owners of Android phones! Google has released a preview version of Android “O” (I’m personally hoping the final name will be Oreo). With it comes a slew of new features and under the hood updates to the underlying Android code. This preview build is primarily for Android developers but us normal people can download it also. Word of warning however, install at your own risk! This is NOT meant to be used as a “daily driver”. This is a super early release of Android O and there are bound to be a bunch of bugs and instability. I suggest using a separate Android (Nexus or Pixel) phone that you don’t use as your primary phone. Here are the more interesting features:
Notifications
Android O introduces notification channels. This groups notifications together by type and users can control which things are displayed per channel. Some apps can already do that now with Android Nougat but this is the first time that it’s introduced at the operating system level and it allows users to centrally control how granular they want their notifications from the settings menu rather than dig through the app. Another notable addition to notifications is the ability to snooze notifications. After pulling down on the notification, you slowly swipe left or right and reveal a clock icon that lets you snooze the notification for up to 60 minutes.
Keyboard Navigation
Android technically has long supported keyboard support but Android itself is currently still not the best when it comes to using a physical keyboard with it (neither is the Apple iPad). The main problem is that Android and iOS are designed with a software keyboard in mind and many apps rely on various features of software keyboards like autocorrect or emojis. Google said that it’s “focused on building a more reliable, predictable model for ‘arrow’ and ‘tab’ navigation.” This is essential because devices such as the iPad Pro and the recently announced Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 are attempting to market themselves as potential laptop replacements and productivity machines. Enhanced keyboard support in Android would go a long way to making that case that mobile OS’s can be a primary computing device.
Better Bluetooth
Apparently, Sony has been a big contributor to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). According to Ars Technica, Sony has donated its proprietary LDAC codec, which is an alternative to the aging A2DP protocol used within Bluetooth. LDAC has a higher bandwidth and higher quality than A2DP. That probably sounds like a confusing mess of acronyms but basically, headphone manufacturers will now have the ability to implement LDAC into their headphones and automatically take advantage of the higher audio quality that LDAC provides. Speaking of Sony, they were actually mentioned in the official developer blog of contributing “more than 30 feature enhancements including the LDAC codec and 250 bug fixes to Android O”.
Battery Life
One of the biggest frustrations with smartphones is poor battery life. There are few phones are able to squeeze out a day and a half, maybe two, of battery life but the great majority of us have to charge our phones every night. Google is trying to improve battery life in Android O by placing limits on background processes similar to what Apple does with iOS. According to Google, Android O will “put additional limits on what apps can do in the background, in three main areas: implicit broadcasts, background services, and location updates”. Ideally, this move would prevent apps for having a free for all when running in the background and thus provide improvements in battery life.
Other Features
Other notable features for Android O include an option for Picture-In-Picture mode, the ability to modify the location of the navigation buttons at the bottom, adaptive home screen app icons that can change shape depending on the theme, and finally support for wide gamut color for photos. There a bunch of other nerdy under the hood changes that most mainstream consumers won’t notice like new Java Language APIs and improvements to the Android Runtime (ART). Needless to say, Android O seems to be worthy upgrade to Android N. The good thing is that these aren’t even all the full consumer facing features and it doesn’t include any changes to Google specific features such as Google Assistant. We’ll probably find out more about those changes during Google I/O.
