Google’s Android O Sprinting Its Way With Promising Features For Mobile App Developers

When I was small I use to Google everything. Things from solving my math problems to finding my lost pencil at the school. Of course, as a kid, this was my assumption that Google was the grooviest thing where you can find anything and everything. Obviously, as I grew this perception was altered. And now I believe it with even more clarity. Google, for me, is the originator of innovation.

For the past two years, Google was making the developer preview for its latest grand piece, Android O. Now is the time to celebrate, to welcome the grand- daddy of all. Although it is not available to the general public for now, but for developers, good news is that you can try & test it right away. Download it from here. For others, it is advised to sit back and relax for the official launch.

Let’s Start With What Is Newfangled In Android O

The first preview in the market brought some exciting expansions for mobile app development and developers in general. Now you can use custom fonts and icons with more precision. Enhancements in audio which made it more professional. More ways to connect with users with local social apps and head-to-head global gaming.

The Improved Battery Life

Keeping the tradition intact Google in Android O took a one step ahead and laser-focused its efforts on apps running in the background. With the groundbreaking technology, Android O is equipped with processes that minimize the battery usage. As per one of the chief executives in Google, Dave Burke:

“We’ve put additional automatic limits on what apps can do in the background, in three main areas: implicit broadcasts, background services, and location updates.”

However, to judge Google Android O just by battery life is judging a book by its cover. There is a lot more to look for in O than just the battery itself.

In Android, O Google took the competition to the next level by resolving the multi-tasking of apps issue with improved working procedures.

Grouped Notifications Is A Life Saver

It is habitual for Google to tweak some items with every update for the notification bar. But with O, Android one step ahead and introduced ‘group notifications’ A superb feature that can help to declutter your mind with no non-sense burden of features that pop-up randomly in the notification bar. These are now called ‘channels’

Custom Adaptive Icon Development For Developers

If the above doesn’t impress you hers in one more update. Now with O, the app developers can make custom adaptive icons which can adjust the shape and color of the icons based on the theme of your phone. This is a pretty much new feature which is not available on iOS or any other platform in the market.

Furthermore, there are some additions in the navigation screen that will be a roof-raisingly cool addition for Android users.

• A clean picture-in-picture mode for watching videos
• Instead of traditional system alert now you can enjoy the new pop-up window of the app.
• Fantastic new ways for keyboard navigation, which includes improved arrow and tab button navigation.
• Multi-display support for launching an activity on a remote display which sounds more like PowerPoint on Android phone.

Lastly, developers have requested some features to be added to make the app more professional and less hassle-free.

• Autofill APIs which will be great plus point for password managers to register themselves as the official autofill app preventing some of the hassles.
• A telecom framework so the third-party apps can act like first-class phone apps.
• Here app developers are requesting for ‘network aware networking’ which will allow all Android devices to communicate more proficiently than Wi-Fi even when the internet is not connected.
• Although Google is claiming that speed is 2X then the previous version but app developers are requesting for Java 8 APIs that will be best at this time.

For now, App Developers can test the Android O on a desktop emulator or one of the following devices Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus Player, Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X. If you are a developer and willing to try you can manually download and try it yourself, rather than sign up for the updates.

Here is Original Blog Post