Android O First Developer Preview Featuring Notification Channels, Background Limits Now Available (googleblog.com) 64
A year after Google released the Android N Developer Preview, the company has made available the developer preview of the next major version of Android, "Android O." You will not want to put it on your primary Android smartphone as the preview is likely to have rough edges. Google says as much. "it's early days, there are more features coming, and there's still plenty of stabilization and performance work ahead of us. But it's booting :)."
The company is using the developer preview to give beta testers a sneak peek into some new features, such as "notification channels," which will offer users the ability to group notifications. There is also Picture in Picture, which will enable you to have a video appear in a small window on top of homescreen or any application. Google is also adding "multi-display support" and improved "keyboard navigation." Your guess is as good as mine as to what these features will actually do. There's also better "background limits" which will supposedly help save battery, and wider Wi-Fi support to include things like Neighborhood Aware Networking (NAN).
No word on what "O" in Android O stands for.
The company is using the developer preview to give beta testers a sneak peek into some new features, such as "notification channels," which will offer users the ability to group notifications. There is also Picture in Picture, which will enable you to have a video appear in a small window on top of homescreen or any application. Google is also adding "multi-display support" and improved "keyboard navigation." Your guess is as good as mine as to what these features will actually do. There's also better "background limits" which will supposedly help save battery, and wider Wi-Fi support to include things like Neighborhood Aware Networking (NAN).
No word on what "O" in Android O stands for.
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Still waiting for subfolders. Until they arrive, Android is the last place I turn for anything where I have to actually organize anything. Which is mostly everything. iOS is no better.
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I think Nova Launcher offers that, but I could be wrong.
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The problem with 3rd party adding is that they can break, leaving you with various levels of leftover problems. This is really something that should be implemented in the GUI. There's a reason computers have hierarchical filesystems. There's a reason Android uses one too, underneath the GUI. It's because they are a profoundly useful way to organize information. I'm not railing at you here... I appreciate the pointer. I'm just frustrated by how annoyingly stupid the Android GUI remains after all this time. A
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That is the GUI. A launcher completely replaces your homescreen and apps drawer, which is just an app. The default launcher has no special privlidges or permissions over a third party, so implementing it there is no more technically valuable than doing so in a 3rd party. So find a 3rd party you like and use it instead. That's one of the benefits of Android- swap out the parts you don't like.
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So... based on the above comments, I bought Nova launcher pro.
When I started it, all my current folders and apps.... gone. It appears I'll have to set everything up again. Am I wrong? Changing back to the Touchwiz, everything came right back. Need to explore this a little more, and seeing as it didn't destroy my previous setup (for which I am grateful), I will indeed experiment. First I guess I have to make a series of notes about the current arrangement and then go into Nova and rebuild it from the ground
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Found it -- import. Very good. :)
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I agree with you there. Android has the ability to have a useful, hierarchical filesystem and method to organize apps. It just is a matter of it not being implemented.
I've personally given up on the latest and greatest launcher that is thrown at me on a phone, and just use Nova Launcher. That way, regardless of make/model, I have the same look. You are right, it isn't perfect and brings oddball issues, but it at least ensures some UI consistency, which is a strong point for iOS.
Granular permissions to apps (Score:2)
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iOS requires the app to ask for permission upon first use before being allowed permission to access location, photos, music library, etc.
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In addition to the other answer about apps having to ask for user permissions on demand, you can also look at any apps settings to see what the permission settings are for location, push notifications, and whatever else the app needs permission for - either turning it off or on from there as well.
So I can easily decide to give an app push permission for a day, then quiet it again.
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I believe you are completely ignorant when it comes to iOS. From day one, iOS forces apps to ask for permission before accessing certain resources. There is no way to bypass such permission requests without jailbreaking.
Re:Granular permissions to apps (Score:4, Informative)
Since Android 6 apps install with no/limited permission, the first time it wants your location (or to access your camera, a file etc) a pop-up from the OS asks to grant it.
I like that feature because it allows me to see why the app needs this or that permission.
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With root, you can install "XPosed framework" and "XPrivacy". This allows fine-grained control per app for lots of rights.
The O stands for .... (Score:1)
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Nestle gave them a deal and they had a joint advertising campaign for Kit Kat so I guess it's possible.
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Oatmeal Cookie would be a decent, "non-trademark" name.
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Othello.
https://www.odense-marcipan.dk... [odense-marcipan.dk]
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Anise, you fucktard.
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.... you do know that all Android builds have a candy/dessert that the letter stands for, right?
Ice Cream Sandwich, Jellybean, KitKat, Lollipop, Marshmallow, Nougat, etc.
Please tell me your comment is because you're mortally stupid.
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N if for Nougat
O is for O.....
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The summary doesn't ask what it means; it asks what it stands for.
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Color Management (Score:2)
Color Management was introduced in Microsoft Windows... 95! And yet, here we are in 2017, and it is FINALLY being added to Android!? HOLYSHIT, Been seriously waiting YEARS for this. Now if only Apple could get their head out of their ass and support it in iOS too...
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The fuck are you talking about? iOS already has color management.
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Color Management was introduced in Microsoft Windows... 95!
Wow you are claiming Windows as some colour management success? WTF are you smoking? I'm looking at you right now on a hyper saturated display simply because Windows colour management is a joke. Windows provides an API for telling apps what colour profiles they may use, and then leave it 100% up to the app to implement, often poorly. Window's own APIs are a joke compared to those even in basic photography apps doing a horrible job of perceptual conversion.
You say colour management was introduced in Windows
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OK. I'll say color management was introduced on the Apple ][.
OTOH, this is a really stupid argument. Names are just names, and two guys named Harry can be quite different, yet both really named Harry. I don't know what the MSWind color management system is like, or what the Android color management system is like, but even if they're quite different they can both reasonably be called by the same name if they do *something* having to do with managing colors.
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but even if they're quite different they can both reasonably be called by the same name if they do *something* having to do with managing colors.
Which means that Android could be introducing a new paradigm that was never seen before (e.g. the still non-existent universal colour management on the OS level). Which makes it a bit silly to compare it to anything if your scope is so large.
Point is the same. The colour management as introduced in BOTH Apple ][ and Windows 95 is nothing that could reasonably be called colour management. Hell both systems were unable to cope with screens being attached from each other thanks to the standard gamma difference
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Apple probably doesn't need it as much, whether they have it or not.
There is a limited number of different iOS devices, all of them LCDs, and app developers could target them all individually if required.
Contrast to the thousands of Android devices, going from black-and-white screens to hypersaturated AMOLEDs...
multi-display support? (Score:2)
how about being able to cast to your TV and still have a screen on your phone to control video? or whatever?
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My guess (Score:2)
Google is also adding "multi-display support" and improved "keyboard navigation." Your guess is as good as mine as to what these features will actually do.
My guess is that former adds support for multiple displays and the latter improves the navigation of the keyboard.
It's fairly obvious (Score:2)
The O stands for Observation
My question... why not bigger stuff? (Score:2)
I wonder why Android can't have some bigger improvements to it. Google has a lot of developer resources, and some items added might make it a lot more developer and enterprise friendly:
A hypervisor comes to mind, so Android can have a VM for work, a VM for home, etc. This is especially useful with dual-SIM phones, or a phone using the SIM for one VM, and Google Voice for another.
A filesystem like APFS with deduplication, bit rot protection, encryption provisions on a block level, and other items.
A way to
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Just because they can doesn't mean they want to.
Zram? (Score:2)
Are we getting zram configured with swap device size = 4x RAM, mem_limit = 50% RAM, vm.swappiness = 100? That will give effective doubling of RAM for approximately no performance hit.
've not found the performance asymptote yet. The crude theoretical limit is exchanging 100% of working RAM for 3x the compressed space (100% compressed to an average 3:1, although 4:1 happens sometimes--typically you average 3:1). The frequency of page decompression increases as you reduce the working RAM (the part not ho
O for.... (Score:1)
Ossum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIZF8uUTtk [youtube.com]
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They probably won't use Oreo, because that names a trademark. (You could argue that this is another area of business...but better to avoid legal wrangles.) Orangeade would probably be safe, but it's not similar to marshmallow or nougat. I suppose they could just use orange. (That would let them use quince for "q". But I still don't see how they'd handle 'x'.)
The 'O' stands for.... (Score:2)
No word on what "O" in Android O stands for.
My money's on "Ovaltine", which is both in keeping with their naming scheme and a fun reminder of A Christmas Story.