Google just launched today the last developer preview of Android O, the long speculated latest Android operating system version. As of now the API of the OS seems to be bundled with a lot of promise and can really help developers add value to their Android apps in the time to come. Here in this post, we are going to see what this new Android version consists of for developers.

Powerful Notifications

One of the most widely discussed upgrades with the new Android O is its important notifications. The notifications thanks to this new OS will become user adaptable for every separate channel. Moreover, the new OS will allow developers to send group notifications directly from the apps to target groups. The best thing is, unlike earlier versions, this new Android OS will give users lot of freedom to deal with a variety of notifications on the basis of the channels. Let us explain the key attributes of new notification feature.

• Notification channels: Android O comes with notification channels allowing users are customizing the channels for each different type of notification they like to interact with.
• Notification badges: Android O also comes with robust support to allow displaying badges with each notification.
• The new feature also allows snoozing notifications only to access them at a later period.
• Notification timeouts: Users can also set a specific timeout for each notification.
• Background notification colors: Users can also use different background colors for notifications coming from various sources.
• Notification message style: The new OS version also allows different styles in messaging.

Picture-in-Picture (PIP) Mode

Android O comes loaded with Picture-in-Picture feature, a key feature already available with Android TV. This feature allows the user surfing the internet while playing the YouTube video in separate windows.

Color Management

Android is one of the most fragmented platforms with a broad range of devices offering different types of display screens. Now the all new Android O will also allow developers are rendering a more vivid colour palette for different device screens.

Autofill Framework

It is extremely common for users to forget their login and transaction details. Moreover, often filling up such details is time-consuming and is subject to errors. Finally, the repetitive tasks of filling forms are boring and can be detrimental to user experience as a whole. By introducing a new Autofill Framework, Android O provided a better way to fill up forms automatically based on the user identity.

Background limits

For every new device and OS upgrade the primary concern that haunts manufacturers and developers worldwide is the battery power consumption. There is hardly any device or OS update in the recent times without a reliable reference to improved battery power. To prevent apps consuming too much battery power by running in the background, the new OS allows setting power consumption limits for certain apps running in the background.

Some new things with fonts

Android O also came with an array of serious upgrades with new font types and rendering of fonts. Both Android O and Android Support Library 26 allow developers are requesting for fonts from a third party provider app and so it is no longer required to depend on the limited number of fonts bundled within the APK or rely on the downloaded fonts by the APK.

Android O also comes loaded with a new feature called Fonts in XML allowing the developers to use fonts as resources. Thanks to this feature the developers do not need to deliver fonts as assets. The developers now can access fonts as resources rattan as assets.

Enhanced display capacity

The all new Android O is also equipped with a lot of new capabilities to offer superior display and visual quality. Instead of providing a default aspect ratio as with earlier versions Android O offers a lot of flexibility concerning this. By using max Aspect Ratio attribute located within the manifest file, the developers can easily for the optimum aspect ratio for an app.

The new OS also offers support for a broad range of displays. Besides supporting multiple window display users can quickly shift their activities from one display to another smoothly. When launching activity within an app, it asks in which show the user wants to run the activity. As far as multi window support is concerned, the respective app needs to have inbuilt support for this. Moreover, when an activity is moved from one display to another, you are allowed to change the dimension as per your preference or the screen size.

Smart sharing

Android O is also equipped with smart sharing features. It learns about the users preferences on sharing documents and files and accordingly allows sharing different types of contents with respective suitable apps. For instance, if the user creates a meme or captures a selfie image, it automatically understands that these contents are right for social media sharing. Smart, preference based sharing capability makes sharing documents and files across the apps easier and quicker.

Smart text selection

When it comes to interacting with texts in more relevant ways Android O offers a lot of never-before capabilities. Devices that are compatible with all the features of Android O can help rendering these features. For example, just by long pressing a word within a text representing a place or restaurant name, users can see a floating toolbar with contextual links to deal with the selected word. By clicking further within the toolbar, you can reach a different app contextual to the selected word.

In conclusion, we can easily say that the new Android O is equipped to excel with a whole array of smart capabilities and enhancements in every regard. We still need to sit cross legged for a few months until the OS is launched finally. Android O is definitely coming out to be a better and cleaner android version, with an orientation towards performance. Indianappdevelopers is an Android app development company with a focused approach. We offer android solutions by incorporating best practices and proven methodologies.