TechTheDay

Google has finally released a new version of the Android and, as per tradition, it is named after a well-known sweet. This time, Google has chosen to name it after the world renown Oreo cookies. The name of the new Android OS, which was only known as “Android O”, was revealed during the solar eclipse on August 21 at 14th Street Park, Manhattan. It’s just across the street from where the original Nabisco factory was located. It was at that factory that the original Oreo was first created. This is a first for Google, as they usually announce their new Android OS in their headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Sagar Kamdar, the product manager for Android, said that the name was decided on after several nights in their headquarters, where their engineers kept eating the snack with milk.

New Features

The new OS version has some new features, like its “picture-to-picture” mode. This new mode lets apps run in a corner of the screen while running other apps. Another feature that the OS have will help people manage a huge number of notifications in their devices. The OS will organize notifications into groups and categories so people can choose which ones to ignore, unlike before where users can only block all notifications. There is now also a “smart copy-and-paste” function that lets users highlight whole addresses, phone numbers or URLs by detecting certain patterns like proper nouns. It can also open a map when highlighting a recognized address, instead of offering to copy it.

Battery saving is one of the main focus of the new OS. So now Android will limit the number of background processes of inactive apps. This will not only give Android devices longer battery lives but will also reduce the consumed memory or RAM, a big plus especially for those who like to run multiple social media apps like Facebook and Twitter while playing games on their phones.

The State of Android

Android is the most dominant mobile OS on the planet, used by 9 out of 10 smartphones worldwide. It also powers other devices, like smart TVs or smart watches. According to Google, there are more than 2 billion devices worldwide that use Android.

The problem now, however, is how to make the new software available to all users. Android might be the most used OS but it has different versions currently in use and only 13.5 percent of existing Android users are using the latest version, Nougat. This is according to a recent data collection done by Google that ended on August 8. The rest of the devices used today are using older versions of Android: Marshmallow, KitKat, Jellybean, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Lollipop with Gingerbread being the oldest of the last three. Apple, however, isn’t experiencing the same problem as their rival: their iOS 10 is now being used by 87 percent of their devices, 10 percent are still using the iOS 9 and 3 percent for the older versions.

Some believe that the reason for such fragmentation is because of Google’s partners and the phone manufacturers, who like to add their own tweaks to the version of Android they are installing in their devices. Getting them all to update to the newest OS has always been a problem for Google.

It is ultimately up to the phone manufacturers if they will let the new software be available for their devices currently in the market. Google, however, has already announced that their Nexus phones and Pixel phones will be the first ones to receive the updated OS. Sagar Kamdar also said that they are currently working with their partners to have their devices launch with the new OS or upgrade to it before the end of this year.