present
are a few possessions users will look for in an Android update: fewer errors,
more fluid performance and an better UI. Smartphone manufacturers hope it will
be adaptable, easy to maintain, and that the features will be compatible with
the hardware without causing any issue.
The last major overhaul of Android's UI happen in 2014 with the bound from Android 4.4 KitKat to Android 5.0 Lollipop. Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, was replaced by Hiroshi Lockheimer. The latter is still around and choosing to stick with the material design that was introduced with Lollipop. That is why many people's first impersonation of the new Android O will be "similar as for all time."
Taking
a second, closer look reveal that in depth improvements have been made since
Android Nougat. These include the status bar, which sits at the top of
your notification shade even when pull down, that shows your WiFi connection
and other statuses. For Nougat, these were only publicized in the fast setting.
New settings
by the setting
menu, Google has taken a step back. Nougat introduced the ability to see the
main Settings menu on the left side of the screen, no matter how deep in the
Settings menu you are. For Android O, this has disappeared, and you must just
press the back switch to access the main menu again.
The
hierarchy of the setting menu has been totally restructured. This was
completely necessary, as even with a search function, it was without a solution
to get a good overview of the Settings and make sense of the menu's
structure. You can now get an overview of the contents of every section
below each section's title. The order appears quite logical.
Under
"Network & Internet" you will find options for data use or
hotspot. "User & Accounts" have now been merged, and include
multi-user settings and Android sign-in settings for both tablet and
smartphone, as well as account for Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other
services.
Manually installing apps
Google
has changed the way Android handle "apps from unidentified sources",
like those from F-Droid or the Amazon App Shop. The option has moved from its
current location in the Security settings, and you don't have to give entrance
to all external sources just to install one app that you trust. Now, you can go
to Apps & Notifications
> Special access > Install other apps, and then choose to label an personality app as
trustworthy, rather than allowing setting up of all APKs.
The design
behind this is nice: if you set Chrome as a trusted source for APK files, that
means ones from sketchy email attachment won't be automatically install too.
Bundling them all together by allowing "unknown sources" is now a
thing of the past - which will be a relief to security experts who see it
as a gateway for malware. There is also an additional prompt before every
update, for example: F-Droid won't be allowed to automatically update apps in
the background not including explicit permission like the Play
Store can.
SMS Backup
at last,
Android will backup your SMS messages on Google Drive. while Marshmallow,
Android has been able to backup app data and setting, but SMS was never part of
the deal. This shortcoming was apparently fixed, but we weren't able to try the
quality for ourselves.
File Explorer
The
file explorer, already introduced in Android Marshmallow, now finally come to
the foreground. Before, to access the file explorer, you had to go to Settings > Memory > Explore, but now there's an app icon
for it. The app, which was earlier just Downloads, was finally renamed to Files, and it now display the file contents of
the internal memory, and external memory (if you have a microSIM card
installed). This allow you to search directories and copy, move
and delete files.
Notifications Managing
Once
again, Google has brought some changes to the notification. With Android O,
Google has introduced Notification Channels. These are app-specific and give
users a more fine-grained power over their notification. A good way to use this
would be to only allow alerts for emails labeled as "Important".
Provided, of course, that the app supports this new notification characteristic.
In addition, Google has improved how the notifications are displayed - but, at
the moment, this just seem to complicate thing.
Source : https://www.androidpit.com
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