Google’s phased rollout of Android’s latest mobile operating system, the Android 7.0 Nougat, is now in Phase II.
After being made available on Nexus devices, Google is now rolling it out to the Android One range of smartphones, but Sony has announced that it will be available later this year on several models of the Xperia family.
Most of the updates to the new mobile OS from Android have already been seen by developers in preview mode, but here’s what we think are the best of them.
While the multi-tasking capability are, without a doubt, robust, there’s so much functionality and so many nuances built in that it could confuse a lot of users not familiar with multi-window mode.
So here goes…
Lollipop-like Stability and Functionality, But More OOMPH
The first thing we noticed was a striking resemblance to their earlier Lollipop iterations. The Nougat carries over some of the same features that were also seen on the Marshmallow last year – fingerprint API, not as many performance issues and a visually more “polished” look.
One of the more significant improvements to both Lollipop and Marshmallow, however, lie in Nougat’s multi-tasking capabilities. Some of us have already seen the split-screen view, but the multi-window feature along with some of the other multi-tasking features could be their biggest achievement yet.
When you’re inside an app, you need to long-press the recent apps button to get the multi-view option. Once you pick the first app, it will set at the top half of the screen (or to the left in landscape orientation), and the app picker can then be used to choose the second app you want to work with. It gets a little complicated when you consider that you can also long-press an app in the app picker and drag it to the top (or left in landscape), and even set a gesture action so an upward swipe on the overview button activates multi-window mode.
Toggling between Apps is Super-easy
In addition to multi-window mode, Nougat also offers much quicker app switching. Simply double-tap the overview button to switch to the previous app. It also works with the dual window feature so you can actually be writing an email while switching between two different social apps in the bottom window, for example.
This feature is especially useful when you want to take notes from an article and want to quickly toggle between notes and a calculator or calendar.
Enhanced Notifications Capabilities
I’m a big fan of notifications and what they’re capable of and, although Nougat hasn’t brought in any stunning upgrades here over the Marshmallow, the interface is now very different. It has a flatter look and is now full-screen width so you can see more of the notification.
In addition, they’ve included what a lot of people have been waiting for – the Quick Reply feature on the Notifications Panel so you don’t have to get into the app to respond to messages and so on.
You can now also share, delete and archive notifications, something that wasn’t possible on earlier versions of Android. But the only problem is that the app itself has to support these features so this may cause some conflict with certain apps that don’t immediately get updates to handle Nougat’s capabilities here.
Doze Mode gets Beefier
This was a feature that a lot of people appreciated because Doze Mode essentially sent you device to sleep when it was stationary. On the Nougat, it will even work if you’re phone is moving – in your pocket, handbag and so on.
Doze Mode basically saves you a lot of data usage and battery power because it shuts off all the non-critical processes like WiFi scanning, auto-sync (it still does it, but only periodically instead of continually) and wakelocks.
Users will appreciate this feature because it will give their battery a much longer life between charges, and they’ll be saving a ton of money in data usage that would otherwise require major settings tweaks to control.
The OS is faster than its predecessors, and contains Google’s system-wide features like Chrome Optimization and faster mobile page loading.
On the whole, I think users will be very happy with Nougat once it rolls out to all Android devices, but it’s still not clear when that might happen.
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