Google has officially announced a new pre-release version Android O for developers with new functionality, but work still needs to be done to improve performance and stability.
Over the next months, Google will be posting a deeper developer version update Android at a Google I / O event this May.
What's new in Android O:
- Limiting Background Tasks: Android O improved the offline time of devices, adding automatic restrictions on what applications can do while running in the background, and what they are not allowed to do.
- Notification Channels: These are new app-defined notification categories, allowing developers to give users fine control over different kinds of notifications – users can block or change the behavior of each channel individually, instead of managing all of the app's notifications.
- Autocomplete API: Users can now select an application to autocomplete forms, similar to how they select a keyboard.
- Picture-in-picture for mobile and new windowing options: Picture-in-picture is now available on phones and tablets so users can continue watching videos when they answer in chat or use auto-navigation . Among other innovations, there is built-in support for displaying images for several applications on different displays, for example, displaying system notifications on an additional display.
- Font resources in XML: fonts are now a fully supported resource type in Android O. Applications can now use fonts in XML layouts, as well as define font families in XML – defining the style and weighting of the font along with the font files .
- Responsive icons: depending on the device, the size and shape of application icons, as well as their animation, can change.
- Extended color gamut for apps: Developers can now create apps with a wider color gamut for display on their respective displays.
- Communications: Support Bluetooth of the LDAC audio codec and Wi-Fi Aware technology (formerly known as Neighbor Awareness Networking), with which you can exchange information over Wi-Fi between devices without connecting to an access point.
- Keyboard Navigation Support: A more reliable and predictable navigation model when using the arrow and tab keys.
- A Audi o API for Pro Audi o: A new native API specifically designed for applications that require high performance audio with low latency.
- Improvements for WebView (web browsing in Android applications).
- Java 8 API Optimization and Runtime.