Android O-reo

logixtr group
Aug 25, 2017 · 4 min read

Get Your Apps Ready with a all new version of Android Code Named Android O. Google is ready with a fresh version of Android Code named O.

The world’s favourite is now in your mobile. Google has released certain features and APIs in the developer preview. With the recent announcement, google has revealed that it will be updating the Pixel phones and the Nexus 6P, 5X and the Nexus Player to Android 8.0 Oreo.

Background Limits

We all love our battery life, dont we ?

As with every version, google has tried to improve device battery life. With Marshmallow they introduced Doze mode which brought significant improvement to battery. This was further modified into Extended Doze Mode in Nougat.

Android O has targeted apps and how they consume battery in background. Google has introduced a feature named “background limits”.

This will put additional restrictions of what applications can perform tasks in the background in the areas of broadcasts, services and fetching user location.

This feature will be very much significant for developers. Do check out the developer documentation on background execution limits and background location limits for details.

Notification Channels and dots

Google has been playing with the Notification Panel since lollipop. Looks like they are still not over it.

We introduce to you notification channels which gives more control and power to users for managing their incoming push notifications. As the name suggests, notifications have been moved in to a group or channel of notifications.

Earlier user could block the entire app from showing any notification at all be it a advert notification or any other app related notification. Now user can specifically block one type of channel notification leaving all other channel push as it is.

Android O has finally introduced cute dot badges on app icons starting from O. It shows notifications associated with one or more notifications channels which the user has not yet acted upon. User can turn off the badges from settings.

User can perform a long press on the app icon to see the notifications, similar to the actions in the notification drawer.

AutoFill Framework

There are certain apps like DashLane, 1Password which has implemented Auto Fill Frameworks. Creating and managing a mechanism for auto filling textfields needs to be built from scratch and is a very tiresome thing to do.

Android O has introduced AutoFill which makes it easy for app developers to auto fill textfields like username, mobile, credit card information or any other form related fields.

If you are using any native views then you don’t need to do anything. The AutoFill Framework will handle itself but if you are using any customised view, then you need to write some code to actually see the magic happen.

Adaptive Icons

Starting from this version, google is trying to implement different app icons for different devices and OEMs. For example, if you want your app could have a square icon in a Nexus device and a round icon in a Samsung device. This will allow individual OEMS to render icons of different shapes as they feel like.

A Little Bit More on Android O

Custom Fonts

Till now most of you have been using third party apps to use custom fonts like Calligraphy. With Android O, they have give native support for custom fonts.

Well done Google!

Autosize TextViews

Lets say you have some dynamic content on your screen and you want your text size to resize accordingly, we present you Autosizing Textviews.

There is much more to come. Hold your horses. We will be back with more blogs!

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