Android 8.0 Oreo – An Overview

After years of hard work and months of testing, finally, on August 21, 2017, Google officially launched and introduced to the world Android 8.0 Oreo. The faster and the powerful version ever introduces users to tons of great features such as autofill, picture-in-picture, Google Play Protect, integrated Instant Apps, faster boot time, and much more.

“With Android Oreo, Android has been made more powerful and easy to use.”

Power Saving & Quicker Boot Time – Oreo has subjected background activities to limitations in the form of location updates, implicit broadcasts, and background services. This, in turn, will minimize energy consumption, increase the battery life of the mobile device along with efficient performance.

Background Service limitations and Broadcast limitations are the two types of limitations introduced.

If multiple apps are registered for many broadcasts, the event that triggers a broadcast in those apps receive and consume resources which ultimately results in poor user experience. Apps that target Android 8.0 or higher can no longer register broadcast receivers for implicit broadcasts in their manifest. However, the manifest can be used to register explicit broadcasts.

Picture – In – Picture Mode – The picture-in-picture (PIP) mode is a feature that many of us have been waiting for ages now. It is one of the biggest and awesome features offered in Android as it enables users to manage two tasks simultaneously regardless the screen size.

With this feature, multitasking is no more impossible. It allows the user to watch video on the small screen while other apps will occupy full screen thus enabling the user to perform other operations.

The activity entering PIP mode goes into the paused state but remains started. However, the users will have to abide by one rule prior using the same. In order to use this, video apps must be updated. For YouTube, a user has to subscribe YouTube Red or Google Play Music to use new PIP mode. If the activity is currently in PIP mode, the settings are updated. If not, the configuration has to be done.

Notifications – In Android 8.0 Oreo (Android O), notifications have been redesigned so that the user can easily and consistently manage notification behavior and settings. The changes are as follows:

• Notification Channels: It is a system that allows you to create a user-customizable channel for every notification. If there are too many notifications, a user might completely block notifications. On devices targeting Android O or higher version, apps will display notification badge on app icons. To have the glance at the notifications, users can long-press on an app icon with the notification badge.• Notification Channels: It is a system that allows you to create a user-customizable channel for every notification. If there are too many notifications, a user might completely block notifications. On devices targeting Android O or higher version, apps will display notification badge on app icons. To have the glance at the notifications, users can long-press on an app icon with the notification badge.
• Notification Dots: Notification badges also known as notification dots reflect the presence of notifications that the user has not yet dismissed or acted on. Users can turn off badges for notification channels or apps from the App’s Settings. After having glanced at the notifications, users can either dismiss or act on notifications from the long-press menu in a similar way.

Other changes include snoozing, notification timeout, notification dismissal, changing the background colors, and messaging style.

Autofill Framework – Autofill framework simplifies the work of users when they set up a new device and synchronize their passwords. Apps that require account creation, login, and credit card transactions are not only time consuming but are also prone to errors. Android 8.0 (API level 26) makes filling out forms, such as login and credit card forms, easier with the introduction of the Autofill Framework.

Autofill will roll out fully over the next few weeks as part of an update to Google Play Services.

Other Android Vitals That Have Been Introduced

• Autosizing TextView – On the basis of the size of the TextView, the Android 8.0 automatically expands or contracts the size of your text, regardless of the amount. With this update, it becomes easier to optimize the text size on different screens or with dynamic content.Autosizing TextView – On the basis of the size of the TextView, the Android 8.0 automatically expands or contracts the size of your text, regardless of the amount. With this update, it becomes easier to optimize the text size on different screens or with dynamic content.
• Fonts in XML – Fonts in XML – another new feature of Android 8.0 which lets the users use fonts as resources. This means you don’t have to bundle the fonts and keep them as assets. Instead, these are compiled in R file and are automatically available in the system as a resource.
• Downloadable Fonts – With downloadable fonts, you can request fonts from a shared provider application instead of including them into the APK or letting the APK download fonts. This reduces APK size, increases the app installation success rate, and multiple apps can share the same font.
• Adaptive Icons – The users have now been introduced to adaptive launcher icons. Based on a mask selected by the device manufacturer, you can now create adaptive icons that the system displays in different shapes. The system also enables interactions within the icons.
• Pinning Shortcut and Widgets – App shortcuts and home screen widgets are vital to engage users. Now, you can let users add and pin shortcuts and widgets to the launcher from within your app. In your app, create pinned shortcuts and widgets for supported launchers, subject to user confirmation.

WE MAKE SURE YOUR APPS ARE READY

Ever since Android 8.0 has been introduced, we, at Source Soft Solutions, make sure to test the apps of our existing customers so that they offer the best experience to the users upgrading to Android Oreo. Same is the case with new customers.

All the apps thus designed run and look great & are user-friendly that can adapt easily to the behavioral changes introduced after the launch of Android Oreo 8.0. In particular, our team of Android app developers pays attention to background location limits, notification channels, and changes in networking, security, and identifiers.

Once all the above-enlisted issues have been resolved, we publish your app updates or the newly created app on Google Play in all the three channels i.e., alpha, beta, or production, so that they’re available once the users start using Android 8.0 Oreo.

Our Android app developers also make sure that your updated app runs well on Android Oreo as well as older versions. Before finally rolling it out on the grand stage, we make it live on Google Play’s beta testing feature to get early feedback from a small group of users.

We’re looking forward to seeing your app soar high with Android O!

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