Android O: Top features to look forward to

Google has the tendency of announcing newer Android systems unexpectedly. For instance, Google launched the Android Nougat last year a couple of months ahead of its developer’s conference. It appears like the company will be continuing the year-old tradition as they recently published the developer preview of the Android O ahead of the event.

This version is available for the official Android Emulator and can be installed on Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel C tablet, Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones.

(Here is the list of instructions you must follow in order to download the latest version of Android)

Let’s take a look at the top seven features that one can look forward to in the upcoming Android O:

1. Battery-life: Google like always, has put in extra effort into improving the battery life through Android O. The new system automatically limits background app activity to help conserve power.

2. Notifications: Android users can now have a tidier set of notifications by sorting them out into “channels.”

3. Multi-display support: Users will now be able to watch a video while looking at another app. In other words, the new Android OS provides users with the ability to launch an activity using its latest multi-display support.

4. Adaptive icons: Android O introduces adaptive launcher icons, which can display a variety of shapes across different device models. For example, a launcher icon can display using a circular shape on one OEM device, and display a squircle on another device. Each device OEM provides a mask, which the system then uses to render all icons with the same shape. The new launcher icons are also used in shortcuts, the Settings app, sharing dialogs, and the overview screen.

5. MediaPlayer: In Android O, MediaPlayer includes new methods implementing these new features:The ability to improve performance by controlling buffering behaviour, fine-grained control when seeking to a frame, the ability to playback DRM-protected material. Apart from that, listening to music through wireless headphones with the new Audio API is the kind of experience that receives a significant boost with the latest update.

6. Wide-gamut color for apps: Android developers of imaging apps can now take advantage of new devices that have a wide-gamut color capable display. To display wide gamut images, apps will need to enable a flag in their manifest (per activity) and load bitmaps with an embedded wide color profile (AdobeRGB, Pro Photo RGB, DCI-P3, etc.).

7. Keyboard navigation: With the advent of Google Play apps on Chrome OS and other large form factors, we're seeing a resurgence of keyboard navigation use within these apps. In Android O, the company focused on building a more reliable, predictable model for "arrow" and "tab" navigation that aids both developers and end users.