Google ‘Android O’ is Here! Better Battery, Notifications & More Features to Know

Google has just released a developer preview of Android O. We still don’t know what the O stands for, but have a good idea of what are the features being pushed via the new operating system. Dave Burke, Google’s VP of Engineering, says it is still early days and there is still plenty of performance and stabilisation work that needs to be done on the OS.

Here is a look at the new Android O features

Google seems to be going for the biggest pain point in smartphones as the one thing it wants to solve first. So Andorid O will come with additional automatic limits on what apps can do in the background, thus saving battery life even more.

The new notification channels feature gives users control over a certain type of notification which they can block or snooze in one go. You will no longer have to manage all the notifications as if they were the same.

Google is making autofill easier by adding platform support for such apps. So once you select which autofill app you want to use, it will be able to fill passwords and other details for you across the OS making life much easier.

There will be picture-in-picture support for apps across the OS, so you will be able to minimize the video if you have to do something else. Developers can even specify the aspect ration and set custom interactions on the reduced window.

For those who love wireless audio, Android O will bring in high-quality Bluetooth audio codecs such as LDAC codec. Plus there is AAudio, a new native API for apps which need high-performance, low-latency audio.

The Android O Developer Preview includes an updated SDK which can be tested on the Android Emulator as well as on Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel, Pixel XL and Pixel C devices. There’s also an emulator on testing Android Wear 2.0 on Android O.