The developer preview of Android O was released in March 2017. Android has come a long way since it was first introduced, and with Android O, it will make things easy for the Android user. Several tweaks have been made to the changes enlisted in Android N last year. These tweaks promise to improve the user experience, and give Android O the much desired makeover.
Let’s have a quick look at how different Android O is from Android N.
Notifications Android N had introduced some defining changes to notifications. They received a new look and feel. The notifications bundle was a new introduction in Android N. Just like the previous version, several notifications from a single app are bundled for better viewing. With Android N, you could pull down the individual chat or notification from the bundle, and view what that has to say. You can customize the notification label in settings. You can even allow pop-ups for the latest notification alone.
Android O has slightly upgraded notifications. Now, you have notification channels, which can further classify your app alerts into categories. You can then personalize the settings for the category your app belongs to. You can even snooze them individually, and set it for another time. For developers, you can now time their appearance on the lock screen. Set the timer, such that the alert goes away once the timer goes off. You can even customize their background and set a colour that matches your display theme. Now, you can truly personalize your notifications with the help of ideal Android app development company.
Quick Settings The quick settings button is a dear friend of the Android user. It is here that you can switch on the WiFi, enable Bluetooth from, and perform the other tasks. This was made easy and user-friendly in Android N. You still needed to enter the individual settings panel to trigger them.
With Android O, things have changed slightly. When you press the Bluetooth or WiFi buttons on the screen, a toggle switch will pop-up allowing you to enable/disable the function. When you click on the text below, you would enter the settings page for the individual function. This tweak makes things easy and convenient.
File Manager The app drawer in Android N had downloads folder. If you wanted to access the other files, you have to go to settings>storage>explore.
With Android O, you can view all the files from the explorer browser on your app drawer, making it easy for you to search for the files you want. This is a convenient view for the user.
Display & Icons The icons will see a tremendous makeover with Android O. This new version introduces adaptive icons, which will make them appear bigger and better. This will even animate the interactions that occur on the screen. Your app will support the theme chosen by the user, and will personalize the icon to match it. This will be in sync with the device theme option.
The ambient display in Android N detailed out the notifications, which caused clutter. This will be cleaned up in Android O. The app alerts in ambient display particularly will be displayed using small icons, placed next to each other. This intends to save battery. This will come with quick options to reply, archive etc, thus making things easy for the end user.
Picture-in-picture This feature was first introduced in Android N, wherein the picture-in-picture concept can be derived for Android TV alone. If you an android-based TV, you could watch a movie/series while browsing the internet. This was indeed user-friendly, and gave way for multi-tasking.
Android O has gone a step further with this concept. Now, you can easily introduce picture-in-picture concept in the mobile as well as in the tablets. This will definitely enhance your multi-tasking capabilities, and make it experiential for the users as well. If you want to make the most of this opportunity, it is time to connect with apt android app developers.
Personalize lock screens With Android O, you can customize the lock screens. There are short cuts that you can use to customize them. With Android N, the customization of lock screen was introduced but, not many people actually used it. There were other functions and features that allowed you to perform the lock screen functions with ease. This is probably why lock screen customization was not very interesting in Android N. With Android O, you can add custom apps to the lock screen, the ones you want to access. “Composes new email” and “directions to a chosen destination” with the custom lock screen.
Along with the lock screen, you can customize the navigation bar too. You can add buttons to the navigation bar. For this, you will need to enable system UI tuner.
Battery Android has been trying to optimize the battery with every new version. In Android O, it has optimized the battery with impressive features. The doze feature that was introduced with Android N gets a better tweak in Android O. This version has introduced more restrictions on what the apps can do in the background, thus ensuring longer battery life. The developer preview for Android O seems to be quite promising.
Miscellaneous Changes Android O has also introduced minor changes to the UI. These tweaks come with cleaner and lighter fonts. This new version introduces support for autofill APIs. For example, you can use the information from LinkedIn to enter professional details on certain apps. This will save you a lot of time. The newer apps will have multitudes of colours to choose from as Android has increased the colour gamut with this new version. The WebViews in Android O will use multiprocess rendering as default. Safety has been increased by manifolds in case of Android O so that users can browse in a verified and safe environment.
Quick settings panel is editable and cleaner. The battery is more optimized and performance friendly. Android O is definitely coming out to be a better and cleaner android version, with an orientation towards performance.
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