The much awaited and highly anticipated Android Oreo 8.0 has finally arrived. Google recently unveiled their latest version of Android and keeping their cool tradition alive, named it after a snack. The Android Oreo 8.0 brings tons of new features, improvements, updates, optimization and security.
Let’s take a look at all the new features and tweaks brought by Android Oreo 8.0 and how it is better than the previous Android Version (7.0 Nougat).
System and UI Tweaks
As expected, you’ll find some changes in the UI and some slight optimizations in the system, to make Android 8.0 faster, snappier and lighter. In order to reduce the impact applications have on the device’s performance and battery, Google has introduced background execution and background location limits. This restricts the background activity of some applications, ensuring faster execution of apps/tasks, better transaction between apps, improved performance and extended battery life.
More Convenient Notification Structure
Google has made some significant alterations in the Notification structure for Android 8.0.
The first feature related to notifications is ‘notification dots’, one that iPhone users are familiar with. Basically, now you can see dots on your android application icons, if there are some notifications pending for that application.
Google’s latest Android Oreo 8.0 comes with another interesting and convenient feature. It now lets you snooze notifications for a specific period of time, until you’re ready to deal with them
Perhaps the biggest addition related to notifications, is the notification priority settings. Apparently, Android now lets you categorize app notifications from urgent to low. This gives you control over which notifications you want to see and how intrusive they can be.
Picture-in-Picture
Picture-in-Picture feature is certainly amongst the most useful additions. This feature makes everyday tasks much more convenient and is pretty useful. Picture-in-Picture feature makes multi-tasking much easier. Android Oreo now lets you watch videos in a small window, while you can keep doing another task in another main window.
Android has extended picture-in-picture feature support from pretty much all applications, as long as the respective app developers decide to avail it.
Other Features
Other Features included in the Android Oreo 8.0, which weren’t available in the previous version of Android include Wider Android Autofill APIs, adaptive icons to allow developers to use different shaped icons, improved Keyboard Navigation, accessibility buttons, optimized audio experience, support for full colour management, high quality audio experience and a slightly optimized camera experiences.
Supported Devices
Currently, Android Oreo 8.0 is being rolled out for Google’s Pixel and Nexus devices. Other supported devices are likely to get the updates by October.