The official release of Android 8.0 — ANDROID OREO is released on August 21 — Monday. The update is rolling to support Pixel and Nexus devices. It looks and feels like the final developer preview 4, follow the progress previews here and you will know what’s new in the store. Here are the all new features, changes and things about Android Oreo.
Release Schedules of Android O
Android O Release became Android 8.0 Oreo, as predicted the letter ‘O’ with a sweet name. The final version was followed by a series of developer previews.
First Developer Preview — Arrived in March
Second Developer Preview — In the middle of May
Third Developer Preview — In the middle of June
Fourth and Final Preview — Middle of July and right on Schedule.
Public version ( Android 8.0 ) was supported Nexus, Pixel and android one devices starting at August 21 2017.
New in Android O — Developer Preview 4
Octopus Easter Egg — In the fourth preview, the easter egg changed from Neko Atsume cat catcher game to Octopus.
“Powered by Android “ — “Powered by Android “ a logo appears under the G logo on the boot screen of Pixel devices.
Stopping applications from displaying over other — In the app info menu, toggles now appear and it allows you to disable the ability for the selected applications to make over the top of others. By making changes in the Android system notification you can able to remove the notifications.
From Settings — Apps & notification — App info — show system — Android system — App notification and finally flip “ Display over other apps “ to OFF. to write over other apps go to settings — Apps & notifications — Advanced — Special app access — Display over other apps.
Adaptive Notification dots — In Google I/O 2017, Google Notification dots would be coming up with Android O, in preview 3 the dots with standard blue color and in final version it appears to be in different color depends upon the app icon.
Performance and Bug fixes — A lot of bugs are been fixed and performances are improved in the final preview. Battery drain issue, camera launch issues were fixed. Many other improvements are done.
Notifications, Lock screen and Font Changes — Some font changes are in the final preview. In the lock screen the date is no more in caps and clock is smaller. The battery percentage is slightly bolder, time and carrier info have given some spaces in the status bar. In the notifications shade, date has some changes which makes more legible. The space between the toggle and the notification has been removed. Mobile data switch has been changed to its old one.
Removed “ Change app icon Shape” — In the final developer preview, options to change the app icon has been removed, in the preview 2 it has been found in the home screen settings but in final it has been removed. Icon badging is also removed. For individual apps notification dots can be enabled or disabled.
New System App icon — System apps has an updated icon, and it is not implemented in every case.
New in Android O — Developer Preview 3
Final APIs and Official SDK of Android 8.0
In the Phone setting of Developer preview 3, the version listed is no longer Android O, but Android 8.0. There is not much developments in preview 3, the final APIs and the official SDK are done with Second beta.
Background apps notifications — Developer preview 3 introduces a easy and quick way to check the applications that are running in the background. A system notification remains you the background running apps.
System User Interface options were removed — In the third preview Google removed several options, including my personal favourite. Picture-in-Picture and lock Screen options were now removed.
Camera App — Double tapping leads to zooming 50 % and for switching between photos and videos now there is a dedicated button by overwriting the swipe mode.
Teardrop : New Icon Shape — In the preview three you can choose the shape from the default system app as square, circular, rounded square and the new teardrop (All0- like shape )
Other Stuff — A battery remaining animation have been added. In the status bar the order of the mobile data icon and the Wi- Fi have been reversed. In the home screen setting an icon badge now appears and this enables the notification dot.
New in Android O — Developer Preview 2
Fluid Experience — As per Google I/O, it is a way of helping in improving your productivity and enjoying the multi tasking tools which you use everyday. TENSOR FLOW — Google’s Machine learning tool, makes low powered devices to keep up with the demanding processes. To improve the experience it uses techniques like LSTM. Android O helps in keeping the AI components in the devices, and avoiding the need of servers to perform actions like text selections. These includes some tools like, smart Text Selection, Picture-in-Picture, Notification Dots, Auto fill.
Picture-in-Picture — It is more familiar in many televisions, you tube apps on android and in iOS. Android O Google added picture-in-picture mode. The video will be pop into a small window by tapping the home button and you can use other apps
Notification Dots — Custom Launchers knows well about the usage of Notification icon that appears at the top of the app icon. Google is building it with Android O you can see a small dot on the top of the app icon. By long pressing on the app icon with the Notification dot you can able to get a list of short link actions that you can perform. Android O does not have this Long press options and we can look forward in Beta release.
New Emojis — All new emojis are introduced in Second Preview. Collections of new emojis.
Smart Text Selection — Highlighting the text includes more features in Android O, using Artificial Intelligence. For eg — if you highlight a address and a single tap will begin navigation , highlighting a number can allow to dial and much more features.
Auto -fill — Quick logging into services for frequently used apps. Auto fill needs to coded , but once installed it remembers your user name and in some cases your password.
Vitals — For a better battery life Android O includes features under Vitals occupying OS optimization and tools , security tools for developers. Helps in preventing the application that runs too long in background. The main is to reduce the battery consumption.
A new developer tool Play Console provides the analytics. Developers can see the live results.
Other Stuff — There are more number of new features have been added but many can’t see in the effect. Android O includes font support so this will be very much helpful for the developers to to define their font style & weight. There are also some additional optimization to the ART — Android Runtime for handling the apps.
New in Android O — Developer Preview 1
Notification Shade — In Android O you can see the visual changes by swiping the notification shade. And the toggles now have some little spaces and there is an reordering. Besides the shortcut menu, now we can find cellular connection icons and Wi-Fi. Notifications looks same as such of Nougat.
Notification Handling — There are some new options in the notification handling. You can find a toggle when you long press the notification, allowing to disable the future notifications.
Swiping the notifications gives you two options — 1. Accessing the notification 2. A clock for snoozing it.
Quick Setting- When Compared with Nexus devices you will able to see more different color schemes in Quick settings. Same blue-gray background for Nexuses.
App Badges — Android O adds supports for app badges known as Notification dots. These are a numbered bubble showing the unread notifications of the app.
Setting Menu — This the place where maximum visual changes take place. Both for Pixels and Nexus there are new color schemes available. In this First Developer preview hamburger menu and slide -out navigation drawer have been removed.
The setting menu is much shorter when compared with Nougat and this is one of the major change, with no categories like personal & system, Wireless and networks,devices. Instead of that Android O has connected devices, Networks and internet, security and screen lock. Everything is in their places with a small changes. The things that you know in Nougat exist in Android O, but you need to dig a lot to find it. Without Interminable In Android O Google has grouped things that makes more sense.
System UI Tuner — According to your personal preferences you can tweak certain things by enabling System Ui Tuner as that of Nougat. In order to enable it you need to swipe down the notification shade or long press the status gear icon.System UI tuner lies under settings — system in Android O. It includes four areas, status bar, lock screen, navigation bar and Do not disturb.
Status bar — With the aid of toggles you can enable or disable icons in the status bar. So, if you wish you can remove hotspot icons or bluetooth as you wish. Displaying the battery percentage in battery icon will no longer be available in Android O. In Android O enabling the “ always show percentage will keeps the percentage visible.
Do not Disturb — It has two toggles one for enabling the do not disturb mode and other for adding volume.
Navigation bar — Navigation bar contains a bunch of options in Android O, a layout options helps in choosing compact , normat, right-learning or left-learning.
Lock Screen — Lock Screen is same as that of Nougat, having options in system UI. There are huge number of options making us to think a perfect Android 8.0 feature. Ambient Display have also been updated.
Notification Channel — Notification channel allows you to split your notifications in various themes. In Android O Notification channel allows you to get a direct reply channel, instead of receiving dozens of channels from twitter.
Audio — For Android O, Sony donated its LDAC Codec to Google. If you have LDCA bluetooth headphones you will get better quality in 8.0.
