With Marshmallow representing just one or two percent of the Android devices over the world, its already time to talk about the next Android N update. It’s not far. We’ll be seeing the developer preview at this year’s Google I/O and the final version during October. Here are some of the features that are rumored, expected or confirmed.
Rumored and Expected Android N Features
Android N Names
Since the launch of android cupcake in 2009, one of the biggest anticipation before launch of any new version of Android has been the naming itself. They’ve been named alphabetically each year with names of various desserts. Similarly for this year just think of a dessert that starts with ‘N’. The first thing that comes up in most people’s mind is probably Android 7.0 Nutella and it does seem really likely. Well our boy Sundar Pichai has even said that he’d ask his mother for a name or even let the android fanboys vote for one an official name for Android 7.0.
ChromeOS + Android OS
Chromebooks have been around for almost half a decade now but only got famous and commonly known around a year or two ago. It has definitely changed the way we think about cheap laptops and stirred up the competition. We have learned from various sources last year that Chrome OS and Android would be merged and that Chrome OS in its entirety would be killed off. But Google later responded saying that it will stay and was looking for ways to bring the two OSes together rather than erasing one of them. With this, it is kinda likely for them them to announce some integration between Chrome OS and Android.
Goodbye Hangouts
Google Hangouts, previously known as Google Talk shipped with almost all Android phones along with an SMS app. Most people just used the second one as it was just a lot more easier and just what people wanted. They are rumored to bring this new form of messaging called RCS (Rich Communications Services) to Android N which will be replacing the traditional SMS.
“Rich Communications Services (RCS) is a new standard for carrier messaging and brings many of the features that people now expect from mobile messaging, such as group chats, high res photos and more.” – Google.
Get Creative
According to this article from folks over at Android Authority, Samsung may be planning to get rid of many of the S Pen features from its Look API. The only thing we came assume from this is that these features are being built into Android N like the implementation of Fingerprint scanner in Android M.
Battery Optimization
Battery life has always been one of the main concerns of Android OS since the beginning with heavy multitasking features and background processes. In the name of battery optimization, stock Battery Saver Mode was introduced on Lollipop and Doze Mode on Marshmallow. With these features being very popular and pointed out by many people as being useful, its only likely for Google to refine these features on Android N.
Dark Theme
Several months ago when the preview builds of Android Marshmallow came out, it had this option to switch to Dark Theme where the whole accent of the UI would change from white to black but was pulled out when the final Marshmallow update came out. Many of us really liked that feature especially ones with AMOLED displays so it might just make an entry on Android N.
Everything that’s confirmed
Android N release date
Android N is set to be announced at this year’s Google I/O which takes place on May 18. The developer preview is presented on the first day itself and will be available later on the same day. As of final release, that’s happening around the borders of October and November with initially being available to the Nexus 7 devices and from other manufactures after a while.
Enhanced Tablet Support
During an AMA on reddit not long ago, Glen Murphy from Pixel C team said “we’re working hard on a range of enhancements for this form factor”, which probably means features that take advantage of the big screens on Android tablets. These include real multitasking, better tablet optimized apps, options to configure the navigation buttons and DPI, floating mini apps and other features of such kind.
Multi-window
During the same AMA, it was firmly confirmed that multi-window mode was making its way on to Android N, when Andrew Bowers clearly said “split screen is in the works”. While this has already been implemented into Samsung devices, lets just admit that its certainly not as fluent as we want. We can definitely trust Google to do a far better job than Samsung in terms of software development.
Java APIs to OpenJDK
Google will officially be switching over to OpenJDK in Android N while they previously used Java APIs. They stated “we plan to move Android’s Java language libraries to an OpenJDK-based approach, creating a common code base for developers to build apps and services.” This change is said to make developing apps and services much simpler and easier.
Sources: Android Authority and Latin Post
