Google have hinted at the areas of the Android experience that the next major for their mobile operating system will cover.
Speaking directly to customers in a question and answer session on Reddit, the engineering team for Android revealed that the company still hasn’t settled on a name for the update.
Regardless of the name, Android O will add a new picture-in-picture mode and new notification dots to the OS, as well as a number of under-the-hood improvements that will see devices boot faster, load apps quicker and operate in a way that’s more secure than previous releases.
More specifically, Google’s devs clarified that Android O will bring important improvements to Bluetooth audio playback.
“Our testing shows that BT audio reliability is drastically better vs [Android] N because of these changes. We’re happy with how it’s turned out, and we hope you see the same kind of improvements.”
The Q&A also shed some light on Google’s strategy within the tablet market.
Google’s Mike Cleron says that “we are continuing to invest in productivity use cases (keyboard-driven UI, multiwindow, etc) but also — along with lots of other folks in the industry — working on what the next evolution of tablets should be.”
“For Android, there are some interesting overlaps with tablets given the increasing success of Chromebooks and the recent addition of the ability to run Android apps on Chrome OS. We are working to make the Android developer stories for both form factors (tablets, Chromebooks) identical.”
According to Google’s Romain Guy, “adaptive refresh rates and 120 Hz rendering is something we’ve been thinking about for years.”
The last version of Android, Nougat, launched back in August of 2016.
