Google I/O 2017 is currently underway in San Francisco, California and as is normal with the annual developer conference, more tidbits about the company’s upcoming Android OS were revealed. Its codename is Android O and Dave Burke, VP of Engineering at Android, took to the Android blog to highlight some of the features we can expect with the new mobile OS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_M4B-pl05M
One of the big announcements at this year’s I/O was the fact that the number of monthly active devices that are running some form of Android are over two billion. That number includes smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, TVs and more, all from a variety of different manufacturers that have adopted the OS. Android’s ubiquity has allowed the company to continue to develop and expand the popular OS with the upcoming version of Android focusing on a multitude of features including improving the battery life of smartphones.
Fluid experiences and the ability to multitask on a smartphone is something consumers of all demographics want and the Android team have placed that at the forefront when designing Android O. Picture-in-picture is a feature that we’ve already seen on Android TV but Android O will bring the added functionality to other devices. PIP will allow users to manage two tasks simultaneously, such as watching a video or checking your calendar, all while doing another, more prominent task on your smartphone.
Notifications have also gotten a new lick of paint by introducing three new features: notification categories, notification badges and snoozing. Notification categories will also users to create a customizable channel for each type of notification they want to have displayed. For instance, rather than have one notification category for all of the messages you receive via a messaging app, you can have separate channels for each chat. Meanwhile, notification badges (also known as notification dots) act as a miniature notification drawer for apps. Long-press on an app icon and you’ll see a small preview of the notification; you can then tap it to respond appropriately. Lastly, snoozing will allow users to dismiss snooze notifications, having them reappear at a later time.
Android Go is a new feature that Google believes will help push Android to another billion devices; It is to Android O what Daydream was to Android Nougat. It’s a version of Android, built for entry-level devices, that’s optimised for being used in data-restricted environments. It’s built into Android O and comes with a set of Google apps that require less memory, storage, and data to run. The target market is obviously developing countries; one that many global smartphone manufacturers are having trouble competing in. Another feature of Android Go is Google Play; the app store will promote a better user experience by highlighting apps that are specifically designed for these low-end devices — such as apps that use less memory, storage space, and mobile data.
Battery life is just one of focuses of Android Vitals, a project focused on optimising battery life, startup time, graphic rendering time, and stability for Android O. According to Burke, a lot of work was done across the system to make apps run faster and smoother. Extensive changes were made in their runtime, including new optimisations like concurrent compacting garbage collection, code locality, and more. Furthermore, background limits finally got the tweak needed to compete with the battery life of iOS devices: “Up to now it’s been fairly easy for apps to unintentionally overuse resources while they’re in the background, and this can adversely affect the performance of the system. So in O, we’ve introduced new limits on background location and wi-fi scans, and changes in the way apps run in the background. These boundaries prevent overuse — they’re about increasing battery life and freeing up memory.”
The bottom line? Expect Android O devices to boot twice as fast with all apps running faster and smoother by default, whilst also not draining your battery in a matter of minutes. Other features Android O touts are adaptive icons, connectivity enhancements, multi-display support, improved gestures, and more.
The public beta of Android O is available for download onto select Pixel and Nexus devices with an official release window of the operating system placed somewhere in the third quarter.
Source: Android Developers Blog
