Android, mobile device operating system of Google, has launched its latest update Android 8.0 Oreo to the world.
Android 8.0 brings a ton of great features such as picture-in-picture, autofill, integrated Instant Apps, Google Play Protect, faster boot time, and much more.
Android Beta users have received the update to the final version and by the end of this year, hardware makers like Essential, General Mobile, HMD Global Home of Nokia Phones, Huawei, HTC, Kyocera, LG, Motorola, Oneplus, Samsung, Sharp and Sony are scheduled to be launching or upgrading new devices to Android 8.0 Oreo.
What’s in Android Oreo?
In Android 8.0 Oreo we focused on creating fluid experiences that make Android even more powerful and easy to use, such as:
Picture-in-picture lets users manage two tasks simultaneously on any size screen, and it’s easy for apps to support it.
Notification dots extend the reach of notifications and offer a new way to surface activity in your apps. Dots work with zero effort for most apps — we even extract the color of the dot from your icon.
Autofill framework simplifies how users set up a new device and synchronize their passwords. Apps using form data can optimize their apps for Autofill, and password manager apps can use the new APIs to make their services available to users in their favorite apps. Autofill will roll out fully over the next few weeks as part of an update to Google Play Services.
Android also invested in Android Vitals, a project focused on optimizing battery life, startup time, graphics rendering, and stability, while giving developers better visibility over the health of their apps:
System optimizations: We worked across the system to help apps run faster and smoother — for example, in the runtime we added a new concurrent compacting garbage collection, code locality, and more.
Background limits: We added new limits on background location and wi-fi scans and changes in the way apps run in the background. These boundaries prevent unintentional overuse of battery and memory and apply to all apps — make sure you understand and account for these in your apps.
Complementary Android Vitals dashboards and IDE profilers: In the Play Console you can now see aggregate data about your app to help you pinpoint common issues – excessive crash rate, ANR rate, frozen frames, slow rendering, excessive wakeups, and more. You’ll also find new performance profilers in Android Studio 3.0, and new instrumentation in the platform.
For developers, Android Oreo includes many new capabilities to help you build better, more efficient apps. Here are just a few:
Autosizing textview: Use autosizing TextView to automatically fill a TextView with text, regardless of the amount. You can create an array of preset text sizes, or set min and max sizes with a step granularity, and the text will grow and shrink to fill the available TextView space.
Fonts in XML: Fonts are now a fully supported resource type. You can now use fonts in XML layouts and define font families in XML.
Downloadable fonts and emoji: With downloadable fonts you can load fonts from a shared provider instead of including them in your APK. The provider and support library manage the download of fonts and shares them across apps. The same implementation also supports downloadable emoji, so you can get updated emoji without being limited to the emoji built into the device.
Adaptive icons: You can now create adaptive icons that the system displays in different shapes, based on a mask selected by a device manufacturer. The system also animates interactions with the icons, and uses them in the launcher, shortcuts, settings, sharing dialogs, and in the overview screen.
