What's new in Android Oreo 8.0 ? All you need to know !

A bird? A plane? No, it's Android Oreo.

Credits: Google

Android Oreo brings several changes to existing features as well as all new features.

Since the original Android first arrived in 2008, It has been a very fluid bit of software. The mobile space is always evolving and Android has evolved along with it so it could meet the needs of people like us who use it every day.

Credits: Google

Now, since Oreo has been released, we want tos hare some things about it you'd like to know.

1. Improved power Management

Representative image

Starting with Android 7.0, Android can restrict certain activities an application wants to do while it's in the background. Oreo builds on this beginning and places top priority on saving power and improving battery life without the user having to do anything or install anything.

In oreo, New limits on implicit broadcasts (sending "signals" for other apps or activities to act upon), background services (activities of an app that run behind the screen) and location updates (checking to see where you are using Android's location services) are automatic. This means it's easier to build apps that don't have an impact on battery life and the user doesn't have to manage anything.

2. Picture in Picture (PiP) for handheld Android smartphones

Earlier, only Android TV supported PiP overlays so that one can watch videos and other stuff while writing an email to someone. But now, with Oreo, in Android smartphones too, one can use PiP mode. With Android Oreo, we can shrink the view of an app into a small secondary window that can be positioned by the user at run time. For example, a YouTube window can be shrunk and moved so that you can take notes in a second app while it's playing.

Watching YouTube while writing an Email in Oreo!, Great !!!

3. Adaptive icons and notification dots/badges

New notification dots let you see notifications in the launcher itself

The Google Pixel Launcher brought adaptive icons, and now Android supports them systemwide and natively.

Options can be given for different shaped masks that define the outside border (think squircles) and icons can be animated. Adaptive icons will be supported in the launcher, shortcuts, device Settings, sharing dialogs, and the app overview screen.

Google has built this out in a way that's easy for developers. They provide an icon as normal and a background, and the system stitches them together using a mask that the home launcher defines.

Android Oreo

Additionally, new icons support badges for new content. Called "Notification Dots" they are a lot like badges we've seen before. Google adds things like a preview pane from the home screen you can access from the icon shortcut as well as app-exclusive shortcuts, such as replying to a message. Such options were still available in previous android versions but in selected launchers like tge famous Nova launcher supported preview panes which appeared on holding an icon. The pane was used to access app related options.

4. Project Treble

Project Treble is a fundamental change in how Android is created and how third party vendors — companies like Qualcomm or NVIDIA or MediaTek — can add their required software outside of the main Android framework. It's a major undertaking and has been a long time coming, but it should alleviate much of the slow update problem we see from companies who make Android phones.

Flow diagram of Android update delivery process

The Pixel and Pixel XL are the only existing phones that will be able to use Project Treble's features, but phones shipping with Android 8.0 or later will have full access. So on new Android phones OTA updates will ve addressed faster.

5. Connectivity

Android Oreo brings some changes to the way our devices communicate with other devices.

Welcome changes include:

High-quality Bluetooth audio through the Sony LDAC codec. Your favorite songs will sound even better through Bluetooth connections. The latest developer preview also has support for the AptX codec, so music through Bluetooth can sound better than ever.

Representative image

NAN (Neighborhood Aware Networking) connectivity using the Wi-Fi Aware specification. Devices with supported hardware can communicate with each other using Wi-Fi without a central access point.

Telecom framework introduces new ways for third-party calling apps to work with each other and with your carrier's special features. New APIs now support apps that don't need to use the universal system phone app to display calling information and this data can be displayed and controlled over Bluetooth.

6. Wide-Gamut color for apps

Developers building applications for Android Oreo on devices that support wide-gamut color can now leverage those displays which support advanced wide-gamut color.

Credits: Google

Apps like photo editors and image viewers can make use of this, and the developers simply need to enable a setting letting the system know the app is wide-gamut color aware and embed a wide color profile. Some of the support profiles are AdobeRGB, Pro Photo RGB, and DCI-P3.

7. Refined keyboard navigation and mouse pointer capture

Tablets with keyboard and trackpad or wireless mouse need a better way to use all the features of an app through the keyboard and mouse. Android Oreo focuses on building a better model for arrow and tab key navigation. This is one of those things that are both better and easier for developers and end users.

Keyboard navigation brings the familiar "Meta-Key+Tab" keyboard navigation to Android apps using what's called keyboard navigation clusters, and Pointer capture give an app or game control over the mouse pointer through the default trackpad or an external mouse. So now gamers can use their mouse for FPS games even on Android.

8. WebView Enhancements

Droid bot with Oreo

Android Oreo enables the multi-process mode for WebView components from Nougat as the default and adds a new set of APIs that provide version information, better ways to terminate a web view window, a method to determine the priority of rendering a web view, and the Google Safe Browsing API.

These make applications that use web development languages better stability and security, and users will benefit if developers enable Google Safe Browsing for remote URLs.

9. Improved camera app

Google is spending some time rewamping the camera app, offering a new double-tap feature that lets you quickly get to 50% zoom.

There’s also a new dedicated button that lets you switch between photo and video modes; previously, users were forced to swipe between two modes, which was absurd for many.

10. Better Audio decoding

Google is also set to add Sony’s LDAC codec, which has been donated to Android by the Japanese tech giant : Sony. This should improve upon the Bluetooth A2DP protocol currently used today.

The company is also introducing AAudio, which should result in improved low-latency audio. The firm says that it’s a “New native API that’s designed specifically for apps that require high-performance, low-latency audio”.

11. Other cool features : (Credits: Google)

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