In what felt like a preemptive move, Google recent forwarded to developers what appears to be the next version of the Android operating system for mobile. It has so far only been dubbed Android N and lists several updates that will come with it. However, the version that the developers were given to work with seems a very early stage of it.
So far, however, planned upgrades for the Android N OS include features such as split-screen and multi-window mode support, bundled message notification, faster replying to incoming messages, as well as better battery efficiency and several more Java 8 language features. All of the above can be tested by developers on Google’s Nexus devices as well as on Google’s Android emulator. Testing is done through a software development kit included in this very early Google Developer Preview.
The vice president of engineering at Google discussed this decision of already pushing the Android N preview release at such an early point into its development. Burke said that Google is attempting something different this year, something where the product is exposed for a much longer time to possible feedback from developers before it even has a chance to get into beta.
It has only been several months since Google released its previous OS, Android Marshmallow, straight on devices coming out of the factory. According to Burke, because of the company’s different perspective in the case of Android N and its forwarding to developers much earlier than usual, the company expects Android N to be a lot more brushed up on by this year’s annual developers’ conference that will take place on May 18th.
The Android N update – that will probably be named Nougat or some other sweet food that starts with an ‘n’, as we have been accustomed to so far – will probably be the version that Android phones have this fall when the operating system is expected to hit the market. However, rolling the new operating system version on all Android devices possible is a process that usually stretches over weeks, if not months.
While the updates that we have been shown so far in regards to the Android N have little chance of coming off as terribly ground-breaking, they’re certainly some life improving features that will bring even more comfort to operating an Android device. Other leaked updates included in the latest Android N developer kit also list emergency contact and medical info listings on the lock screen, an improvement of system navigating controls, system-level number blocking, a better settings menu, app optimizing and many more.
Image Source: 1