Recently, Android has released the first preview for the Android 8.x version, or Android O as it has been called (many people assume that O stands for Oreo, but we will have to wait and see if this theory is true). The Developer Preview 1 addresses registered developers who are willing to sacrifice one of their devices, particularly a Nexus 5X, 6P or a Pixel.
Timeline
From what we know until now, the DP1 was released in March. DP2 is scheduled to be released in the middle of May, while DP3 should come to light sometime in June. Finally, DP4 will be available in July, and after that we will expect the official release in Q3 2017.
Features
According to developers’ declarations, they built on the work they had in the previous version, namely the Android Nougat, and thus Android O is focused on improving the devices when it comes to battery life and the interactive performance. In order to achieve this goal, they added some automatic limits on what the apps are able to do in the background.
Briefly, they changed three main areas: location updates, background services and implicit broadcasts. This means that it is going to be easier to make apps that affect the battery and the device overall in a negative way.
The tech giant also launched their Android Security 2016 Year in Review, and if you skim through it, it is quite obvious that in the future we cannot escape biometric/ secure logins. However, besides this there are also some other additions to the newest version of the OS, such as a new snooze function available for notifications, notification channels, better autofill APIs for passwords and other forms, XML support for fonts, a better multi-window feature, an improved file manager and various tweaks to the System UI Tuner.
Leave a Reply