Android’s New Dessert: Android Q

Published in

Yudiz Solutions

6 min readMar 25, 2019

(What’s new in Q?)

Hello beautiful people, greetings of the day. I hope you are doing well. Today I want to share my thoughts on Google’s Android Q. As you all know every year Google launches a new OS, last year Google launched Android P which was further declared as Android Pie. As it’s legacy, Google announced Android Q Beta 1 version this year.

The Android Q Beta 1 OS was released on 13th March 2019, which can be officially downloaded on the selected devices including Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL and if you are a developer, you can download it on Android emulator. It also announced the future availability of Android Q in third-party models including Xiaomi, Nokia, Vivo, Oppo etc.

As we all are aware of the alphabetic increment used for the OS name in Android which is not surprising but I am damn sure the new features of Android Q are. So sit back and relax, let’s discuss new features of Android Q Beta 1.

1. Top features2. Dates to remember3. Q name possibilities4. Important links

Top Features :

Enhancement in Location Access Controls :

Android Q will be more secure and granular in case of Location Permission. It allows a user to control an android app with options like

1. Allow all the time
2. Allow only while the app is in use
3. Deny

I think it is the coolest and most useful feature for the user in which the user can decide the scope of location access for the specific applications.

Android Q Beta comes with a newly designed permission popup window.

Native Screen Recording:

Menu->Settings->… Feature flags->settings_screenrecord_long_press

Android Q comes with the Native screen recording feature. To enable this feature, you have to dig into your developer settings, you will find native screen recording feature in Feature Flags section within debugging section. After enabling it you will get an option to start screen recording on long press of the power button and it can be stopped easily by clicking stop option in the notification panel.

Device Theming :

Android Q finally gives you the ability to show your creativeness in your device theme without using the 3rd party launcher. Currently, there are limited options which you can change i.e. Accent Color, Headline/Body Font and Icon shape of the device.

Menu-> Settings-> Developer option-> Theming

I expect that this feature might get more options in a future update of Android Q.

Native Dark Mode

Android Q comes with Native dark mode which is another exciting addition to the features that we will observe in the upcoming Android version. This feature also cuts down the battery consumption on Android devices with OLED screens which increase in battery life and enables the users to enjoy more productive hours on their devices.

The native dark mode can be enabled in two ways:

Go to quick setting menu and enable battery saver mode, when it is enabled you can enjoy full dark mode. This is the quickest and easiest way.
You can enable the night mode before you upgrade to Android Q, alternatively you can use ADB to enable it which is something frustrating, personally, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Foldable Phone Support

Android Q comes with foldable display support with a major update in terms of battery life as it was already confirmed by Google when Samsung launched its new foldable device Galaxy F.

Multiple Apps Resume Mode

Android Q has upgraded its feature “split screen” and “Picture-in-Picture (PiP) mode”. This feature enables the users to use all the splits app parallelly in active mode. In other words, if there are two applications running in multi- resume mode than no application will go to background state or inactive/sleep state.

The user can interact with multiple applications simultaneously. It empowers the multitasking feature which is the most required feature for the present generation.

Vulkan API for UI Rendering

Android Q beta comes with Vulkan API for delivering admirable user experience which targets the high-performance real-time 3D graphics. It is low-overhead, 3D graphics, cross-platform and computing API.

Enhanced Treble support

Android Q concentrates on enhancing the treble support which will give a user the compatibility to flash GSI(Generic System Images) for faster software updates.

It empowers app developers to flash different ROMs on a single device effortlessly without even conducting a data wipe or unlocking the bootloader. This feature will eventually help to make it easier for OEMs and developer community to test their new Android OS versions and update at a faster pace.

Improved Notification Access

Android Q comes with user-friendly features added in notification settings by which users can now set into “time to read” setting a popup length from 10 seconds right up to 2 minutes and it’s worth noting it up to each app to support this setting natively.

New Sharing Shortcuts

Android Q has simplified sharing procedure in Android OS. It comes with the new ‘Sharing Shortcuts’ feature that will enable users to directly switch to another application to share images, videos, etc. This feature also helps the developer to publish their particular activity of an app as a share target with an attachment of content that will be available for all users in Share Shortcut UI.

This feature allows users to directly share content quickly and reliably from one application to another and also the sharing speed has been increased from the previous OS.

Settings Panels

Android Q comes with a new Settings Panel API which takes the advantage of slices feature. There will be a floating UI for internet connectivity, NFC and audio volume in the context of the app.

For example, a browser like an app could display connectivity settings UI like:

1. Airplane Mode

2. Wi-Fi (including nearby networks)

3. Mobile Data.

With the help of this feature, the user can smoothly manage connectivity without leaving the current app.

If you want to display settings panel in your application you just have to fire an intent from the new Settings.Panel actions.

Android Q Important Dates

These are tentative release months for Android Q OS.

March 13: Android Q Beta-1 has been launched
Early April: Android Q Beta -2
Early May: Android Q Beta-3
Early June: Android Q Beta-4
July: Android Q Beta-5 & 6
August: Android Q stable and final release may release in August

Q Names Possibilities

As Google names Android OS after desserts, for ‘Q’ there are not many names crossing my mind but here are some possibilities for Android Q Names.