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  • The New Android OS
Technology Articles > Cell Phones > Android > The New Android OS

Google has released its latest OS called (for now) Android O (the OS will eventually get a ‘sweet sounding’ name to go along with the rest of Google’s lineup).

Android O introduces a few new features that Android users will probably like. A lot.

But some of those features might seem familiar to you if you run iOS. Regardless, here are the things that Google has been working on - and what you can expect from Android O when it arrives (right now, the version that has been released is a developer preview).

Android O’s New Offerings

On of the biggest changes that Google has made to its new OS is how apps run in the background. With Android O, apps running in the background can’t take up as much battery life. For example, an app that uses location information will no longer be able to search for location every minute but will be restricted to a few searches per hour.

Apps that run continuously while checking things like email will be completely shut off after a period of time. Other programs that usually drain Android batteries will be shut down after a certain amount of time or only allowed to check and run occasionally. In short, Android users won’t experience battery drain as often as before.

iOS Borrowing

If you are an iOS user, you probably know that many of these new features are already in place with iOS. Because of those features, Apple phone batteries do not drain as quickly as Android phone batteries - well, not due to background programs, anyway.

Apple phones have other battery draining issues (like cold temperatures), but background programs that drain batteries is something that Apple quashed a while ago. Another great change to Android’s new OS is notification alerts. Now, Android users will be able to group notifications into sections called ‘channels.’

Snooze, Anyone?

The other smaller, but still interesting, feature is a snooze notification. This notification happens when a message or alert pops up that a user doesn’t want to deal with right away. In many ways, this is a really small change, but it’s one that Android users have been asking for. So all-in-all, Android users should be very happy with the latest updates to Android O.

Picture in picture display, new Bluetooth connectability, and better connectedness when connecting an Android device to a wireless keyboard are all additions to the new OS. In short, Google has been working hard at making sure that users have what they want (and what they have been asking for).

Arrival

Google will release the new OS soon, but right now it’s available to developers. Google still needs to slap a new name on the OS (expect something that runs along the lines of a creation Willy Wonka might devise) and fix any remaining glitches. The new OS should make a lot of Android users fairly happy, though.

Google is forever working on making its OS updates what users want to see, which is one of the reasons the company is still making a profit on its devices. If you are an Android user, you will enjoy what the company has come up with this time around.