Google Launches Android N Developer Preview And Beta Program (engadget.com)

Google is releasing Android N Preview to developers today. The early release is meant to collect feedback sooner than usual, and even includes a new way to download the update. Instead of installing a drive image, you can participate in an Android Beta Program that installs pre-release versions over the air (as long as you have a relatively recent Nexus device or the Pixel C). The biggest attraction, by far, is a new multi-window mode, which lets you use split-screen modes on phones and tablets, and even specify minimum allowable dimensions. There's even a picture-in-picture video mode, too, so you can keep watching YouTube while you message your friends. Other improvements in the preview include direct reply notifications that let you reply to a message right from an alert, iOS-style. Also, Android N optionally bundles notifications from the same app so that they don't clutter your view. Marshmallow's Doze feature has been improved to save battery life whenever the screen turns off, and coders can take advantage of Java 8 features. Google is also working to reduce the memory needs of Android via Project Svelte, allowing the Android OS to run smoothly on lower specced devices.

Comments

But

[markdavis]

How exciting... all these N improvements I will likely never use, and yet I bet I still won't be able to:

* List/filter contacts by group, which was TAKEN AWAY from us years ago with no notice and for no apparent reason.

* Turn on the Smart Lock but WITHOUT the stupid swipe to continue.

* Have settings menus where the items are actually alphabetized so they can be found quickly.

* Have a battery usage/monitoring system which actually works and means something (like it used to).

* Choose the icon set used in various places, especially the main status bar, so they are actually visible and meaningful (yes, they actually took away the "bars" from WiFi, Cell, and Battery... how brilliant)

* Turn off the persistent Android Wear connected notification which is unnecessary.

I am sure I can think of a lot more, but I am tired (and yes, we are talking Nexus)

Re:But

[Archangel Michael]

How about the very useless and often dangerous HeadsUp Notification popup that actually interferes with whatever you are actually doing at the moment. . Notifications have an area, the bar at the top, use that, like it used to be.

Re:But

[AmiMoJo]

The Android 5/6 battery monitor is far, far better than the old one. Much more accurate and gives you a real idea of what is using that energy, instead of just 90% "screen". What is it you don't like?

You can block the Android Wear notification by holding down on it and then touching the bell with a line through it icon.

My biggest worry about N is that they are thinking of getting rid of the app drawer and going to a stupid iPhone style "shit all your icons out onto the desktop in no particular order". The app drawer is great - alphabetical, searchable, hides away apps you don't often use and lets you keep your home screens clean without having crappy "random apps I hardly ever use" drawers. Just because some people are too dumb to understand the difference between "remove" and "uninstall", don't ruin it for the rest of us.

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. The difference between Android and iOS is that with Android you can have apps that run in the background to perform tasks that you'd wouldn't necessarily interact with. You don't need the icons for them on your home screen, because you only ever launch them to configure them - for example, I use an SMS to email backup tool that I only launched once to configure the email address.

I just hope this isn't the start of a move away from the ability to have those sort of apps and go fully to the iOS way of apps being for interactive use only.

Re:But

[Espectr0]

at least on nexus 5x, if you use the fingerprint you don't need to swipe. Also if you use trusted places no swiping as well

another one: put back the old data usage when you could filter data use by day

Re:But

[markdavis]

>"at least on nexus 5x, if you use the fingerprint you don't need to swipe. Also if you use trusted places no swiping as well"

Well, it is not that way on the Nexus 5... and it is running the same version of Android. Turn on trusted locking and you STILL can't just turn on the display, you have to go through a stupid swipe screen. Makes no sense.

Re:But

[markdavis]

>"The Android 5/6 battery monitor is far, far better than the old one. Much more accurate and gives you a real idea of what is using that energy, instead of just 90% "screen". What is it you don't like?"

On the Nexus 5, it is crap. If you add up everything, it does not equal the amount of battery used.... not even close. I can have 20% of the battery GONE and it shows me 2% in one thing and 1% in about 9 other things and that is it.

>"You can block the Android Wear notification by holding down on it and then touching the bell with a line through it icon."

Doesn't do that on my Nexus 5 running the latest Android (there is no bell). I can long hold it and block ALL Wear notifications through the "i", but I don't want to do that. I just don't want a useless, persistent "connected" notification. It used to be you couldn't even dismiss it! Now you can dismiss it and it just returns a few minutes or hours later. I can tell from the watch if I am connected... My other bluetooth connections don't have a persistent notification. Neither does WiFi. I don't need or want one for Wear. In typical Google Android fashion, we are just not allowed any options or control for the way it works. It is like they are afraid to give users any settings for most of the OS.

>"My biggest worry about N is that they are thinking of getting rid of the app drawer "

Gross. The stupid desktop with the left swipe to "NOW" and persistent search bar on EVERY PAGE is why I was forced to install Nova Launcher. Maybe that will cover a stupid change like that too.... I hope.

Bye Nexus 5

[Nieriko]

There is no image for nexus 5 atm. Sad. Looks like the device finally got unsuported.

Nexus 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Nexus 5 is not on the list of supported devices for Beta program, does that mean that Nexus 5 owners can forget about Android N update?

Re:Nexus 5?

[whh3]

I really hope not. I am a Nexus 5 user and was disappointed that they are not supporting this in the Beta program. However, I will DEFECT from Google entirely if they do not support the device with the next version of the OS. I mean, it's only two years old. I don't want to be "forced" to upgrade to help them make more money by selling more devices.

I mean, that would put me over the edge: use my privacy to make a profit? fine! Force me to buy new hardware on your schedule to use the new OS? Not fine. :-)

Re:Nexus 5?

[ChunderDownunder]

A Google employee was on here a few months ago exhorting us to all buy Nexus devices because they received better support than non Google branded devices. I queried why the Nexus 4 received no Marshmallow update when it was a still a perfectly capable piece of hardware and was told, effectively, stiff cheddar.

Maybe there's an aftermarket for IoT; a Galaxy Nexus/Nexus 4 benchmarks competitively with a rPi 2?

Re:Nexus 5?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the most interesting thing is that anyone is actually surprised by this. Yes, the Nexus line is supported for longer than the vast majority of Android devices with updates, but that's really not saying much when there's a whole class of devices that are sold with an OS from two years ago, and will never see an update regardless of how compromised it is.

There are devices that are sold pre-compromised with spyware ffs. And I'm not just talking about Google's data collection.

re-inventing the wheel

[erapert]

So they're re-inventing things like window managers, platform libraries, GUI toolkits etc. and it's all (of course!) closed off proprietary locked-down bullshit that can't be used on any other platform. So you must try to cobble together a solution that will work for each platform separately and also learn from scratch several different platforms's APIs.

I hate to say this, but maybe the web is and should be the platform of the future.

ENJOY THE QUASIMODAL FUTURE OF YESTERDAY

[Anonymous Coward]

OH FUCKING WOW!

You mean eventually I'll be able to do FULL ON WINDOW MANAGEMENT on my mobile devices?!

HOLY FUCKING SHIT I AM EXCITED!

Wake me when this blip of bullshit has passed and we've caught up with desktops in compute display, and capabilities (because they absolutely will eventually, and maybe the display will be a projector for your retina, etc... but until then ::yawn::)

"Proprietary"? "Locked down"?

[The MAZZTer]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Ask Samsung for them?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Samsung S5 (now 2 generations behind) has split screen, Youtube picture in picture, and message consolidation on the home page. There *are* limitations with all of these so it'll be interesting to see what advances Google might bring to the table.

Re:Ask Samsung for them?

[GuB-42]

The Note 4 (which came just after the S5) really did a great job with multi-window capabilities : floating windows, iconisation, drag and drop between windows, split screen... Unfortunately, few apps support these features because of the Play Store rules that state that multi-window must be disabled unless explicitly authorized in case the app doesn't behave properly. In practice, when forced, most apps do quite well.
Should Google make multi-window part of the official Android, we should see much more apps officially supporting it, which would be great. And if possible, they shouldn't limit themselves to just split-screen.

You can already do all of this

[Anonymous Coward]

... Samsung's TouchWiz layer over Android has these features already, and they work very well. If Google implements these features themselves, I wonder what Samsung will do to differentiate themselves from everyone else?

Ditch Material Design first.

[sethstorm]

Google got it right on Holo, but took a major step back on Material Design.

Woah, multiple windows at once?

[serviscope_minor]

Wow this is incredible! Android has multiple windows at once now! Truly amazing. Will the innovation of mobile never cease? Maybe they'll innovate beyond the copy/paste of plain text too allowing images and etc.

Truly that would advance mobile to way beyone anything I have on the desktop[*].

[*] I like retrocomputing from the early 80s. Like 1985 and before.

The first step to getting rid of chromeos

[DrXym]

If apps can be resizable and specify their dimensions then they can appear in split panes and later on as windows on a desktop. The way that universal apps do in Windows 10. So I see this as part of Google's efforts to kill ChromeOS and merge some of the concepts into Android. I wouldn't be surprised if the Google's app launcher becomes a kind of desktop in future iterations.

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