Slashdot Asks: What Are Your Favorite Android Oreo Features? (thehackernews.com)

Yesterday, Android O officially became Android Oreo and started rolling out to Pixel and Nexus devices. While there are many new features available in the new OS, we thought we'd ask you: what are your favorite Android Oreo features? The Hacker News highlights eleven of the new features "that make Android even better" in their report: 1. No More 'Install From Unknown Sources' Setting: Prior to Android Oreo, third-party app installation requires users to enable just one setting by turning on "Install from unknown sources" -- doesn't matter from where the user has downloaded an APK file, i.e. from a browser, Bluetooth, transferred from a computer via USB or downloaded using another app. Android 8.0 Oreo has completely changed the way this feature works, bringing a much smarter and safer system called "Install other apps," in which a user has to manually permit 3rd-party app installation from different sources.
2. Autofill API Framework: Android 8.0 Oreo brings a built-in secure AutoFill API that allows users-chosen password manager to store different types of sensitive data, such as passwords, credit card numbers, phone numbers, and addresses -- and works throughout the entire system.
3. Picture-in-Picture: With Android Oreo, you can view a YouTube video while reading through a report in Word or be chatting on WhatsApp on your Android device -- thanks to Picture-in-Picture (PIP) feature.
4. Google Play Protect: Play Protect helps in detecting and removing harmful applications with more than 50 billion apps scanned every day.
5. Wi-Fi Aware (Neighborhood Aware Networking -- NAN): Android Oreo has added support for a new connectivity feature called Wi-Fi Aware, also known as Neighborhood Aware Networking (NAN), which allows apps and devices to automatically find, connect to, and share data with each other directly without any internet access point or cellular data.
6. Android Instant Apps: With Android 8.0 Oreo, you can now access a range of Instant Apps without downloading them.
7. Battery-Saving Background Limits: Google has blocked apps from reacting to "implicit broadcasts" and carrying out certain tasks when they are running in the background in an effort to enhance the battery life of Android device. Besides this, Android Oreo will also limit some background services and location updates when an app is not in use.
8. AI-based Smart Text Selection: Android Oreo brings the 'Smart Text Selection' feature, which uses Google's machine learning to detect when something like physical addresses, email addresses, names or phone numbers is selected, then automatically suggests the relevant information on other apps.
9. Notification Dots (Limit notifications): Oreo introduces Notification Dots that offers you to manage each app individually with "fine-grained control," allowing you to control how many notifications you see and how they come through.
10. Find my Device: Google has introduced a new feature, called Find my Device, which is a similar feature to Apple's Find my iPhone and allows people to locate, lock and wipe their Android devices in the event when they go missing or get stolen.
11. New Emoji and Downloadable Fonts: Android Oreo introduces 60 new emoji and a redesign of the current "blob" characters. The update also offers new color support to app developers and the ability to change or animate the shape of icons in their apps.

Comments

All four Oreo users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oreo has only been available for a select few devices. Pure android phones, that's it. I don't expect to see many replies from actual 'Oreo' users, most carriers need time to push out that update.

Re:All four Oreo users?

[scottgfx]

I like the creamy center.

Re:All four Oreo users?

[DontBeAMoran]

That's what she said.

Re:All four Oreo users?

[Anonymous Coward]

most carriers need time to push out that update.

Ha ha ha ha haha ha hahahha hah ah ah ha hah ha ha ha hahah ahhaha!!@!@! ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hah ah ah aha.

Good one!

Re:All four Oreo users?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. No More 'Install From Unknown Sources' Setting

Lame. This is an anti-feature.

2. Autofill API Framework

Can already do that.

3. Picture-in-Picture

Can already do that via split screen.

4. Google Play Protect

Don't need.

5. Wi-Fi Aware (Neighborhood Aware Networking -- NAN)

Can already do that.

6. Android Instant Apps

Don't want.

7. Battery-Saving Background Limits

Can already do that.

8. AI-based Smart Text Selection

Don't need or want.

9. Notification Dots (Limit notifications)

Can already do that.

10. Find my Device

Can already do that.

11. New Emoji and Downloadable Fonts

Don't need or want.

So Google isn't introducing anything good or new.

Re:All four Oreo users?

[sexconker]

Yup. 100% accurate. I'd add "do not want" to #5 as well.

Re:All four Oreo users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it reminds me of Obama. He has a creamy white center, too.

... but I was so certain that a Harvard law professor, senator and presidential candidate really understood what life in the ghetto is like!

Re:All four Oreo users?

[gl4ss]

and instant apps is probably just that * they're installed already. * ...they already have that too. you can disable some of them, but they're there already.

I guess google has started to have had idiots take over the feature choosing department since they clearly have just added stuff that was already there..

oh well at least there is the thing where you will not be out of space to update because there's two copies of the os. but if you think about that for a while it just means that you're not going to be out of space because that space was taken up already.

Re: All four Oreo users?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because this is an advertisement disguised as a question since Android knows if Slashdot doesn't favor, it doesn't make it.

Re: All four Oreo users?

[stealth_finger]

Slashdot doesn't favor, it doesn't make it.

Slashdot doesn't favour anything

Re:All four Oreo users?

[MachineShedFred]

s/need time to/will never/

Re: All four Oreo users?

[Evtim]

Don't ridicule the honest phone vendors. They work day and night to deliver the new OS to their customers....
Just this morning I woke up with notification 'new Android ready to install' on my Samsung!
It was an upgrade from 6.1 to 7.0. ROFL!

Re:All four Oreo users?

[knope]

at least he was "presidential"

Re: All four Oreo users?

[Nocturna81]

Nope. Instant app is where the app is run but not installed and will remove itself when closed. So basically an in memory app

Re: All four Oreo users?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the hole in the middle

Re: All four Oreo users?

[Anonymous Coward]

5of4 checking in, when u get a message while fapping u can continue to watch a muted sex scene at the good part while responding (panting) to the text message without ... skipping a beat.

Beat all meats, visit us online at davidskosherdeli.com, now with cheese substitute.

Re: All four Oreo users?

[Karlt1]

So it's a small Java based app that runs when you browse to a web page. What next are they going to reintroduce the blink tag?

Find My Device?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Nexus 6P running stock (rooted) 7.1.2 already has a "Find Device" app from Google which can remotely locate, ring, lock, and wipe the device. I believe it used to be called Device Manager. Why is this listed as a new feature?

Re:Find My Device?

[gl4ss]

probably made some changes or made it to work after reset - or made it not optional to keep device manager with device admin rights.

Re:Find My Device?

[rainmouse]

You don't even need an app if you sign in on your device and chrome. Just go to https://www.google.com/android...? You can make your phone ring for 5 mins even if it's on silent. Find it. Wipe it etc.

Re:Find My Device?

[bigal123]

I agree and am confused, this feature has been around for a while. Used it 2 days ago when one of my kids lost my phone in the house.
"Find my Device: Google has introduced a new feature, called Find my Device, which is a similar feature to Apple's Find my iPhone and allows people to locate, lock and wipe their Android devices in the event when they go missing or get stolen"

Re:Find My Device?

[LordKronos]

Yep, I've been using that feature for 3 to 4 years. I did a search and it looks like it was launched in August 2013

https://www.theverge.com/2013/...

Re:Find My Device?

[Gonoff]

It was available in Android 4. The new version is less useful and harder to use.

Re:Find My Device?

[Gr8Apes]

It was available in Android 4. The new version is less useful and harder to use.

So, an improvement?

Re:Find My Device?

[jbmartin6]

Nowadays gratuitous interface changes count as a new feature.

Re:Find My Device?

[green1]

Out of curiosity, what have they changed that makes it less useful or harder to use?

Remember when phones made phone calls?

[FrankHaynes]

I'd be happy with a feature where the phone makes a phone call and both parties actually sound intelligible. High quality, even!

Cause Pepperidge Fahm remembahs!

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[FrankHaynes]

Tell me more about this "Voice over LTE" codec of which you speak. Then get off my lawn!!`111!!1

Re:Remember when phones made phone calls?

[Kkloe]

dont buy crappy phones?

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[BlueStrat]

Try getting a phone from the last 5 years, grandpa.

I tried to buy a "phone", but all they wanted to sell me were wireless tracking and marketing devices.

You mean you fell for that?

Wow, kids these days!

Strat

Re:Remember when phones made phone calls?

[Misagon]

It's not only the network that is to blame here.
The race towards thinner phones mean that they get smaller speakers - that are often undersized for the sound they are supposed to produce. Those are often overdriven, using DSP algorithms that keep them on the brink of vibrating out of control. Besides that, there are also DSP algorithms against feedback (from speaker back into mic).

It is better to use a handsfree headset anyway. The jury is still not out on the issue of health effects of microwave radiation - and even with a Bluetooth headset, you will reduce the amount you subject your head to about a thousandfold.

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, grandpa...they can track the location of your landline, too.

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[Anonymous Coward]

The location of my landline is connected to my home which never moves. When I leave home, it does not know that I left.

Re:Remember when phones made phone calls?

[MBGMorden]

Why bother with that? I understand that due to the evolutionary history the device is still called a "phone", but in general the "phone" app on the device is one of the less used features for most people.

It's kinda like the "radio" in my car. Yeah - it's still called that, but it's probably been years since I actually tuned into a station.

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[Anonymous Coward]

[Foghorn Leghorn]

That boy, I say, that boy is about as sharp as a pound of wet liver!

[/Foghorn Leghorn]

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does this have to do with anything? Have you ever even used a phone?

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, it's called the 'service address' and they've been able to 'track' that for about 100 years now.

Re:Remember when phones made phone calls?

[swillden]

I'd be happy with a feature where the phone makes a phone call and both parties actually sound intelligible. High quality, even!

Does your phone and carrier support HD voice? Mine does, and it's a significant improvement, when I call people whose phone/carrier also support it.

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[Bert64]

You could leave your cellphone at home too... Being trackable is the price you pay for the convenience of being able to use it at arbitrary locations, and there's not really any way around that since the signal could always be triangulated.

Re:Remember when phones made phone calls?

[irrational_design]

I probably spend 50 hours on my phone for every 10 minutes I use it to talk or text. I don't think it should even be called a phone anymore since it is so rarely used for that purpose. I consider the fact that my pocket computer can make phone calls and text to be an added bonus and not the primary feature.

Re: Remember when phones made phone calls?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you set up your own private GSM / lte network on the openbands. I can build one for about 400 that will provide sip and internet to my neighboorhood. However avoid using other carriers bands that are easily detectable by carriers which literally takes less than 5 minute call from a carrier to the FCC to come out and triangulate your signal. God you're an idiot.

Come again?

[DontBeAMoran]

Android Instant Apps: With Android 8.0 Oreo, you can now access a range of Instant Apps without downloading them.

How the fuck do you run a program without downloading it? Or is this some marketing bullshit where "downloading" has a different meaning than "installing"?

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

It says you can access them, it doesn't say you can run them. Also, they are Apps, not programs.

Re:Come again?

[FrankHaynes]

It runs in the browser/webkit.

Everything old is new again.

Re:Come again?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

How the fuck do you run a program without downloading it? Or is this some marketing bullshit where "downloading" has a different meaning than "installing"?

Like many things, XKCD explains how (and predicts the feature/product a few years in advance.

Re:Come again?

[sd4f]

Just about everything google has done has been with an intent of keeping users online so that they can be data mined and served ads. There may be a few reasons as to why this 'Instant Apps' is happening, I can only suspect, but possibly DRM is one issue, gaining control of what data gets collected in favour of alternative companies who don't own the platform (facebook, microsoft, snapchat, etc...), another maybe preventing things such as adblockers from working. After all, this will probably force google to be the bridge between app developers and users, or would google be the troll under the bridge...

Re:Come again?

[DontBeAMoran]

The tooltip for that one could not be more on-topic.

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it works like a module, you can access small parts of the app it needs to download something, but you avoid downloading a 50mb file to use 1 small feature of an app. That's what it sounded like anyway when I read about it. From the developer side it looks like a lot more work.

Re:Come again?

[scdeimos]

Answer: thehackernews is misquoting. The official site says "without installation": Android Instant Apps

An evolution in app sharing and discovery, Android Instant Apps allows Android users to run your apps instantly, without installation.

Re:Come again?

[scdeimos]

It sounds a lot like JWS (Java Web Start) to me.

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

90% of apps in the Play Store are just wrappers around web content. This innovative new feature allows you to launch the web page without installing the app.

Re: Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think they're called progressive web apps.

Re: Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the app shell is installed in the browser cache. Then some kind of proxy script decides if it needs to download more or serve from cache.

Re:Come again?

[sexconker]

It's bullshit. Of course you download it. But you only download a tiny sliver, because the only thing this shit is ever used for is ads.

Ever play a F2P game and have an option to watch an ad for gems/gold/whatever? But the ad is an interactive mini demo of a game? That's all this is, and that's all it ever will be.

Re:Come again?

[duke_cheetah2003]

How the fuck do you run a program without downloading it? Or is this some marketing bullshit where "downloading" has a different meaning than "installing"?

I'm imaging something much like the way you can use a virtual machine without being anywhere near the hardware running it.

Not like server side processing is anything new. It's just spitting out the result in some new elegant way.

Re:Come again?

[duke_cheetah2003]

How the fuck do you run a program without downloading it? Or is this some marketing bullshit where "downloading" has a different meaning than "installing"?

We can stream HD video FFS. Is it so unimaginable to stream a program's code and data on the fly?

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't stream video without downloading either.

Streaming:
Download first chunk.
Play chunk while downloading next chunk.
Discard played chunk and go to next.

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, then they just need to use the same technology to allow the browser to display web pages without downloading them, and we'll finally have a fast browser.

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just spitting out the result in some new elegant way.

Asynchronously, a way that's being around like forever.

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it is, if you've one of the snotty faced generation who grew up with Windows and have never heard of X.

Re:Come again?

[pksadik]

Like many things, XKCD explains how (and predicts the feature/product a few years in advance.

You missed a closing brace. See, XKCD predicted that I would do this.

Re:Come again?

[denzacar]

You don't download or install a full app. Instead, they send you just the code needed to run the feature you want to try out.

E.g. If you want to try out the new fart app, you can just try out the new fart sounds, without all the other features of the app like PoopcamTM, Fart GalleryTM, Fart-outTM message app, FratfartTM map plugins for tracking parties based on the data on number of people gathered in one place after 7 PM local time...

Then, after you're done with it, code you tried out gets deleted from your phone.

Re:Come again?

[MachineShedFred]

because it's a hosted application, rather than one that locally stores all the hundreds of little-used frameworks that some lazy ass developer wired together to make 95% of their "app"?

Re:Come again?

[Imazalil]

They're websites, just with the browser functionality (url bar, back button, etc) hidden, and some deeper access to device functions.

I think it's actually exactly what Apple had in mind with the first iPhone, before the store and everything.

Re:Come again?

[Athanasius]

So this is "run from the .apk file" ? Presumably the advantage is this can be on any storage without faffing with remembering to install it on external SD card with all the issues that can cause... unless of course this suffers the same issues.

Re:Come again?

[green1]

it would be nicer if these "apps" just allowed you to bookmark the website in your normal browser instead.
I'm sick of having dozens of apps on my phone that are all just mini web-browsers.

Re:Come again?

[swillden]

It runs in the browser/webkit.

No, it doesn't.

Instant apps are normal Android apps, with some additional modularization and some additional security constraints. The user-observable difference is that you don't have to go through an install process. Just click a link and up pops the app. The modularization makes it possible for the app to begin functioning before it's all downloaded, and the security constraints mitigate risks created by the lower install/run effort.

Note that it's also not true that instant apps were introduced in Oreo. They first appeared in Nougat, but they were restricted to a specific set of trusted app developers, for security reasons. Based on that experience and more work on the security model, they're being opened up for any app developer -- though I believe they can still only be delivered through Google Play, because the scanning done by the Play store is a key part of the security model. They can run on M+ devices, and there's work ongoing to enable them on Lollipop as well.

https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/index.html

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Note to ACs: I don't read AC replies. If you want to talk to me, log in.

Re:Come again?

[JohnFen]

It's a web page.

Re:Come again?

[Waffle Iron]

So then it's ActiveX.

Everything old is new again.

Re:Come again?

[JohnFen]

We can stream HD video FFS. Is it so unimaginable to stream a program's code and data on the fly?

Streaming is downloading, though.

Re:Come again?

[JohnFen]

My understanding was incorrect. It's not a web page. It's more like a regular app that doesn't get permanently stored on your device.

Re:Come again?

[swillden]

So then it's ActiveX.

Hmm... not completely unrelated, but still different. ActiveX controls were just components that run inside other containers -- in practice, always IE. Instant apps are full apps. You may get to them from a web link, but you can get to them lots of other ways, and they run independently of however you got to them. Also, ActiveX made all sorts of really stupid security mistakes, which is not the case with Instant apps.

Everything old is new again.

Welcome to Computer Science.

The fact that old ideas are instantiated in new systems doesn't make them useless. Not even if the old ideas didn't work well before; they can be done better.

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that's true. Maybe you're thinking of something else? It looks like Android Instant Apps are just regular apps with some additional restrictions and size limits.

Re: Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern app appers app instant apps, unlike luddite web content consumers. Apps!

Re: Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is always pushing the "progressive" SJW agenda.

Re:Come again?

[rpstrong]

It should be a closing parentheses (')'), not a closing brace ('}').

Obligatory XKCD

Re:Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

>they are Apps, not programs
This is why I feel inclined to tolerate appguy's yelling.

3. Picture-in-Picture

[FrankHaynes]

That's gonna be interesting watching a 96x54 pixel YouTube video while you read your report 3 words at a time.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Stormwatch]

The picture doesn't matter much, Youtube is mostly used as a music streaming service these days.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

From looking at most of the texts my friends send to me, three words is about all they need.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! What should we call it? A windowing system? How revolutionary!

1989 called. They want their technology back.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Youtube is mostly used as a music streaming service

Wow. You're stupid.

Huge amounts of Patreon video content is accumulating on Youtube, with millions of contributors.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[serviscope_minor]

Don't knock it. I think Android is really ahead of the times here. Here, by comparison are a number of other well known systems (others exist) which have PIP (i.e.overlapping windows):

Windows 2.0 (1987)
X Windows 1 (1983)
Macintosh (1984)
Amiga 1000 (1985)

In fairness, none of those ran on an ARM processor. For that we had to wait for
RiscOS (1987)

So give those android guys a break, they're really staying on top of things!

(Also, they now have something more or less equivalent to Ad Hoc WIFI? That's only been around since 1998 so it's positively recent! And why the hell was access to ad-hoc APs ever disabled by removing support from the underlying libraries?)

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case why this effort at all. All they needed to do was provide YouTube app with the feature to play in background.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Android already has split screen applications for quite a while, and the YouTube app works fine with it. PIP is just new if you want... smaller windows? Probably just nice for tablets.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Google had to beat Microsoft in being ahead of the times. After all, Microsoft introduced virtual desktops ("task view") as a default feature in Windows 10.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[NoZart]

but then you wouldn't see the ads!!!

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[mjwx]

That's gonna be interesting watching a 96x54 pixel YouTube video while you read your report 3 words at a time.

Android phones have had 1280 x 768 pixels for years now, even your cheap phones have 800 x 400 ish screens.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[geminidomino]

They've had that feature for awhile, it's just tied to the premium subscription.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Gr8Apes]

That's gonna be interesting watching a 96x54 pixel YouTube video while you read your report 3 words at a time.

Well, at least the YT video will be viewable at native resolution!

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[green1]

It's not a new feature by a long shot, Samsung's been doing it for years on some of their phones.

It's one of those "love it or hate it" features, I know some people who think it's the best thing ever, but personally I never end up using it, I have a Note4 so I have one of the largest screens available, and it's still not really big enough to conveniently show 2 windows at once. I'm more likely to swap back and forth than have 2 open at the same time.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[laxguy]

OH, you can do that! ...if you pay for YouTube Red.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[swillden]

That's gonna be interesting watching a 96x54 pixel YouTube video while you read your report 3 words at a time.

I've been using Oreo for quite a while now, and I really like the PiP feature. Even more than YT, I like the way Google Maps works with it. Of course, my screen's resolution is 1440 x 2560, so there's plenty of room to see other stuff.

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Note to ACs: I don't read AC replies. If you want to talk to me, log in.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[chispito]

That's gonna be interesting watching a 96x54 pixel YouTube video while you read your report 3 words at a time.

You're thinking of phones four years ago. Look around you.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[HatofPig]

They're introducing the feature to compete with NewPipe which is a GPL app available on F-Droid which offers the same functionality. It's nice when official apps have to play catch-up with Free software.

Re:3. Picture-in-Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

That's gonna be interesting watching a 96x54 pixel YouTube video while you read your report 3 words at a time.

tablets

Find my device is new?

[Joolz50]

My mum lost her phone a couple of weeks ago. I helped her find it with this: https://www.google.com/android... So how exactly is #10 new?

Re:Find my device is new?

[webnut77]

My mum lost her phone a couple of weeks ago.

I didn't realize flowers had phones. :O

Re:Find my device is new?

[grcumb]

My mum lost her phone a couple of weeks ago.

I didn't realize flowers had phones. :O

Hate to break this to you, but people didn't call you a pansy because of your mother.

Re:Find my device is new?

[webnut77]

My mum lost her phone a couple of weeks ago.

I didn't realize flowers had phones. :O

Hate to break this to you, but people didn't call you a pansy because of your mother.

Right. :-( I'll just go daisy-chain my SCSI drives now.

Re:Find my device is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brits tend to call their mothers either mums or mummies, FYI.

My favorite feature...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

There's no feature that makes me feel like I need Android O.

Re:My favorite feature...

[MachineShedFred]

That's probably good, because the odds are you would need to buy a new device to get it anyway. The track record on most manufacturers / carriers delivering major (and even minor) updates for legacy devices is staggeringly poor.

Re:My favorite feature...

[Urinal Pube]

I'd probably need at least 70 new emoji before I seriously consider this version.

Find my Device

[whoever57]

10. Find my Device: Google has introduced a new feature, called Find my Device, which is a similar feature to Apple's Find my iPhone and allows people to locate, lock and wipe their Android devices in the event when they go missing or get stolen.

How is this new? It's been available for years.

Re:Find my Device

[thegarbz]

I'm wondering if this is controllable from the OS itself in a clear way. From what I've seen (or rather not seen) there's no settings on the device to control the Google's "Where is my phone" function.

Even now the only function I can find to control this is Samsung specific. They rolled their own version of this for some reason.

Re:Find my Device

[Namarrgon]

Settings -> Security & Location -> Find My Device, has separate toggles for "Remotely locate this device", and "Allow remote lock and erase".

Re:Find my Device

[thegarbz]

Not sure if that's an Android 6 thing or an Android Vanilla thing but those settings control the access to Samsung's version of this service. I can't see anywhere to control Google's, and disabling it didn't prevent me from using the where is my phone function of Google.

Re:Find my Device

[Anonymous Coward]

DisableService is your friend. You'd be amazed ow many crap services you can disable.

WiFi Aware sounds Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

WiFi-aware, now even the malware can spread from device to device without internet.

I'm sorry, but this is something that should be default-off.

Re:WiFi Aware sounds Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

About 12 or 13 years ago there was malware that spread via bluetooth, I remember narrowly missing it on a Nokia 6600.

Re:WiFi Aware sounds Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting bit about the spec....the *publisher* of the service receives no notification from the hardware if a subscriber finds them. The subscriber has to explicitly send a message to the publisher saying "Hi, please talk to me". Nice touch, really. No way for people to expose a malicious service and then have devices blindly consume it.

Re:WiFi Aware sounds Evil

[thegarbz]

I'm sorry, but this is something that should be default-off.

Yeah tell me about it. The audacity of these people daring to ship a mobile device with a wireless radio turned on. What are they thinking.

Re:WiFi Aware sounds Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure it is default off.

It's still from Google

[HBI]

And hence, evil. Therefore, I won't be using it.

Re: It's still from Google

[Anonymous Coward]

No one cares.

Re:It's still from Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Well arent you special.

Re:It's still from Google

[Anonymous Coward]

just the google play protect 'feature' is a clue from google that they scan everything on every device every day.

Re:It's still from Google

[Kjella]

And hence, evil. Therefore, I won't be using it.

So... do you have any non-evil suggestions or is that a "the only way to win is not to play" game? Because the only phones I can find for sale new here in Norway now is running:

1) Android
2) iOS
3) Windows Phone (dying...)
4) Blackberry (almost dead...)
5) Nokia OS/Symbian (feature phones)

Unless Apple or Microsoft is now the good guys, there doesn't seem to be any options left. Unless it's some odd foreign import, Kickstarter project or whatever...

Re:It's still from Google

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Apple currently, and Microsoft (pre-Windows 10), were significantly less evil than Google. Both of those companies want my money, not to invade my privacy.

Blackberry runs QNX, (on BB OS), which has been around for a while and is pretty cool. Windows Phone was a good phone, but never looked at what apps were available.

Symbian, btw, is the "not to play" option. You can get a dumbphone.

Re: It's still from Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like my blaxk ex girlfriend

Re:It's still from Google

[MachineShedFred]

Or, they just scan the app image in the Google Play repository, and have a way to flag things as 'bad' so that the device will remove it the next time it checks in for updates, which it already does.

Why would they need to scan hundreds of millions of devices, when all those devices downloaded it from a single repository they own and control?

Yes, Google trades your privacy for their money. But they aren't fucking morons about how they do it.

Re:It's still from Google

[HBI]

I go for least evil. Consider Google the ninth layer of Hell. Apple is near the second layer and Microsoft is unusable, don't bother. ;-)

Re: It's still from Google

[MotherErich]

I'll probably get eaten alive for saying this, but can you get an Ubuntu phone?

Best Feature

[SuperKendall]

If it detects any messages that deviate from Approved Google Thought, it will automatically email child porn to your contacts list as punishment for wrong-think.

Re:Best Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny now, Informative later.

Re:Best Feature

[c-A-d]

Neat how the ACs come out and accuse you of being a nazi for criticising google. No actual though involved, they just vomit up antifa talking points. They're good duckspeakers.

Re:Best Feature

[lucasnate1]

And you are doing just the same by assuming that they are from antifa. There are plenty of others groups that label people as nazis to shut them up.

Re:Best Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Antifa? What the fuck are you talking about? I've never even met or seen anyone who is a part of Antifa. Google is a serious threat to freedom in the US (and the world) and has been for a long time. I'm glad that there is finally some mainstream realization of that fact (I've boycotted google services for about 5 years now). But, you are equating people who are critical of Google's incredibly questionable censorship with a violent group of "anarchists"? Are you reporting from Eglin AFB? Just doing your job, comrade?

Re:Best Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're all oversimplifying a bit.

"Approved Google Thought" by SuperKendall -- Google has a strict anti-discrimination policy. Someone broke it and was fired. There's a difference between discriminating against someone for thoughts other than your own and removing someone from an organization for discriminating against others. They weren't fired for deviated from "Approved Google Thought," they were fired for discrimination. You have look at all of the steps involved. It's not a simple matter of, "this guy said something and they fired him for speaking his mind." If you oversimplify like that you can convince yourself of anything. And really, all of the discrimination/freedom of thought/speech stuff aside. Google should have fired James Damore because that memo was scientifically inaccurate and vast oversimplification of the subject. Google is one of the most innovative tech companies in the world. Firing someone for poor science should be allowed, right?

c-A-d -- I have no idea what you're referencing. Probably something that someone else posted, but was deleted by an admin. Funny how there are no complaints about censorship there. Not everyone is a Nazi, but people who carry a Nazi flag are probably Nazi's. It gets a bit hard to tell if the people standing next to the guy with the flag chanting, "Jews will not replace us," is a Nazi. Gets into a bit of gray area there, doesn't it. Antifa couldn't be more counter productive to everything going on in this country right now. They're doing stupid, terrible things that no one's talking about and that's BS. People should absolutely be calling them out ...but, they are a far extreme, and you've gotta admit, the extreme on the other end is undeniably worse on a far greater scale.

"Plenty of others groups that label people as nazis to shut them up." by lucasnate1 -- We shouldn't blanket everyone as a Nazi, but people should also be more realistic and honest about where they stand, why they're standing there, and who they're standing next to. Is there an appropriate term of all of these groups? White supremacist, Klansman, white nationalist, general-"lee" racist? -- see what I did there? general-"lee" vs generally? get it? -- What is the PC term we should be using these days? It's all so confusing.

Re:Best Feature

[SuperKendall]

Funny how someone writing a document on how to improve diversity at a company is "discriminating" now.

RandomGuy: "Hey let's do more pair programming to help include people who are more social, like the bulk of women!"

Google (checks to see if content came from woman or differently colored or LGBTQ or disabled member, nope): *Trump Voice* YOU'RE FIRED.

Re: Best Feature

[MotherErich]

Have you read the memo? It's pretty sexist and at best just bad science. Claiming that there's a biological difference drawing more men to tech than women has no basis because we live in a vacuum where there has hasn't been a level playing field in... well forever. Women have been involved and making advancements in CompSci since it's conception, but they've been kept in back rooms and simply told they're not "made" for it based on nothing but the result of the same system. Your "checks to see if content came from woman or differently colored or LGBTQ or disabled member, nope" comment is awfully telling of how irrationally you're looking at the issue. You must have Hysteria or something. Oh, and as much as you don't want to admit it, "Hey let's do more pair programming to help include people who are more social, like the bulk of women!" is a sexist comment.

It's open

[phantomfive]

It's open, that's basically it. There is a constant trail of pain that follows the iPhone, every year or so there's another story that reminds why a closed system is problematic.

Re:It's open

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of those features are implemented as part of Google Play Services/Google Services Framework (gms or gsf) which is a closed source module installed on all phones which support google apps (if your manufacturer wants Google Play, YouTube, Google Maps or a few other somewhat popular apps you are basically required to sign an agreement with Google which includes shipping Google Play Services)

They now just add new APIs into Google Play Services and eventually almost every app will have found an excuse to use one of many APIs in their closed source framework.

So yes the core OS is open, but Android as an app platform not so much any more.

Re:It's open

[phantomfive]

Just as important as the open-source OS: I don't need permission from the manufacturer to install apps......or anything else on the device. That is an important aspect of openness.

Re:It's open

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why I root and install Lineagos, F-Droid for AFWall+ and AdAway. No Google spyware. No carrier spyware. No ads. No network/internet for any app unless I explicitly allow it. If I didn't have this level of control I would be a very sad asshole.

Re:It's open

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish to uninstall Gooogle Now from my phone -- I don't want it anywhere near it.
Can I do that?

Hardly open!

Re:It's open

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, instead you are just a smug asshole.

Re:It's open

[green1]

Sure you can. You'll need root to fully uninstall it, but you can likely block it without that. On the bright side, most android phones are relatively easy to root.

dhcp6 client

[webnut77]

Is dhcp6 client still missing?

The best feature

[natebizu5504]

would be finding Oreo on a sub $400 phone. I am done paying $600+ for a phone that stops getting updates after 3 months.

Re:The best feature

[Anonymous Coward]

My OP3 will get Oreo and cost $399...

Re:The best feature

[grumpy-cowboy]

Same thing for me. My Google Pixel XL is the last 'high-end' phone I bought. I just need a phone I can make calls (duh!), read my emails, send SMS, browser the web, take some random photos (don't need 999 megapixels resolution!), ... THAT's IT. Don't need 4K resolution on a 5.7" screen! Don't need 3D [insert whatever here]. ... My next phone will cost me less than 300/400$ for sure.

Re:The best feature

[Anonymous Coward]

OnePlus

Re:The best feature

[jareth-0205]

would be finding Oreo on a sub $400 phone. I am done paying $600+ for a phone that stops getting updates after 3 months.

Nexus 5x? Plus probably all that are listed here (eventually):

http://www.pocket-lint.com/new...

Re:The best feature

[jareth-0205]

Same thing for me. My Google Pixel XL is the last 'high-end' phone I bought. I just need a phone I can make calls (duh!), read my emails, send SMS, browser the web, take some random photos (don't need 999 megapixels resolution!), ... THAT's IT. Don't need 4K resolution on a 5.7" screen! Don't need 3D [insert whatever here]. ... My next phone will cost me less than 300/400$ for sure.

Yeah, the mid-range is pretty solid at this point, I have a Moto Z Play and I don't want for anything. Anyway, your Pixel will get next year's big update too and will satisfactorily do that job for atleast a couple of years. By which point your requirements might be in budget territory... Yay competition.

Re:The best feature

[sgrover]

I picked up Nexus 6Ps for my wife and myself a year and a half ago with Android 6 on it. I kinda expected the upgrade to Android 7 (which was released within a few months of the phone). I was surprised to learn the phones are eligible for Android Oreo. While it is not a sub $400 phone, it is not "new", but is still receiving updates. I bought the Google favoured phones specifically because I got burned in the past buying a Cell Service Provider feature phone and never getting ANY updates to it. That phone was more than $400 as well and was effectively stagnant by the time I got it home. So a little patience and (cash) leads to a longer serving phone than if I had bought the flavor of the month instead. Needless to say I've updated my phone to Oreo. I'm liking the improved power management thus far, but it still has only been one full day....

Re:The best feature

[swillden]

would be finding Oreo on a sub $400 phone. I am done paying $600+ for a phone that stops getting updates after 3 months.

Get a refurbished Pixel. I just got one for my son for $400. It will get Oreo, and will get P, and will get security updates until around the time Q is released. I think this is a good strategy that walks the line between budget and features: Buy last year's device and keep it for two years. For ~$200 per year this keeps you on relatively new hardware, running the latest OS and getting monthly security updates.

Re: The best feature

[Anonymous Coward]

My Nexus 5x was under that amount from the Google play store when I bought it in 2015. Still getting updates!

Grindr app integrated in iOS 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming to Android too?

Aunt Jemima

[Anonymous Coward]

Meet Uncle Ben.

Um, how about the most hated feature?

[Anonymous Coward]

#1 sucks. How am I going to run F-Droid?

www.f-droid.org

Re:Um, how about the most hated feature?

[green1]

Nothing here will block f-droid, the only difference is that you'll need to approve the installs each time, hardly a major problem.

Like me doing two black chicks on the side

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm.

My thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

1- OK
2- Do not want. Will not use.
3- Uhh okay
4- I rarely install apps, so uhh, okay whatever
5- Zero interest from me
6- This sounds like they'll preinstall a bunch of shit I don't want. Hope I'm wrong.
7- OK
8- Do not want. The text selector in v5 and/or v6 was better than the garbage in v7
9- OK i guess
10- Already exists
11- I give zero shits

On an unrelated note, hopefully they can fix the bugs in Gmail! That's what I'd like to see most.

That Creamy Centre

[Anonymous Coward]

Yummy! Gimme that tasty Google jizz, amirite my fellow slashdotters?! Hell yeah I am!

  There's nothing I like more than a throbbing member begging to explode on my face with that salty sweet goodnes. Even better when it comes from a superior Apple user before hitting my Thai 'girlfriend'.

Bittersweet never tasted sooooo goooood!

Samsung

[jimbo]

I have a Samsung phone you insensitive clod. I won't get Oreo for another eight months.

Actually it's an S6, there's divided opinions on whether it'll get the update at all. I hope it will, I expect to keep it another 2-3 years to match the lifespan of my old iPhone.

Re:Samsung

[SandmanWAIX]

I have an S6 and am still stuck on Marshmallow. I am in Australia, the phone splash when I turn it on says Optus and my carrier is Virgin. I am hoping if/when I eventually get Oreo it will dramatically improve the upgrade times for future Android versions. I wonder if the upgrade path now will be to skip Nougat and go directly to Oreo.

Re:Samsung

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung may be slow, but the S6 got to Nougat (2 major versions) and even devices that do not get major versions do get security updates.
Samsung is not as bad as rumored. But carrier firmware? Ouch.

In any case, O may be a win for all: the OS can partially update under the hood, taking away work from the vendor in releasing updates and taking away the awit for security updates for the consumer.

Perhaps those wins could make O an attractive last upgrade even for older devices?

Re:Samsung

[tsa]

iPhones don't break down or become unusable once they don't get updates anymore. They easily last for 7 years or more.

Re:Samsung

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck using a phone that hasn't had security updates for a few years. Iphone exploits in particular are widely published. Also, a compromised phone doesn't necessarily scream out "I've been compromised"

Re:Samsung

[green1]

Thing is, they're about 7 years behind on features compared to Android, so that's about right.

Re:Samsung

[Ksevio]

You could probably manually update it to Nougat with LineageOS and they say they've started work on getting Oreo builds

Re:Samsung

[tsa]

And thus another flame war starts :).

Permission control?

[enigma32]

Yeah, these features are great and all, but I'm still waiting for fine-grained **permission control**.
Why can I not block apps from doing particular things?

iPhones have this. Shouldn't even be an issue.

Re:Permission control?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a recent Android device? My Lenovo Tab B, which still runs Marshmallow (argh), has fine grained permission controls for each installed app available via the stock Settings app.

Re:Permission control?

[enigma32]

No, and you know what, you're right.
I've been avoiding buying a new one because (among other things) I had heard for a long time that Google was refusing to add such permission control. Apparently I missed the memo when it finally became available...

Re:Permission control?

[Anonymous Coward]

What permissions you can control is curated though. It doesn't work for things like internet access, or manage Wifi connections.

Re:Permission control?

[apoc.famine]

And many apps aren't designed to fail gracefully without their expected permissions, and you get all sorts of wonky behavior. I get pretty regular popups in Google Mail because I didn't allow Google Play Services access to my wearable devices and location. Those popups tell me that Google Mail can't work properly because of issues in Google Play, and that I should go fix them. Except that Google Mail works just fine, once I dismiss the incessant popup telling me it doesn't. This has only been an issue for a year and a half, so it should be fixed soon, right?

Re:Permission control?

[Ksevio]

Android used to have this as well then it was removed, but available through an app "AppOps" (usually needed a rooted phone).

Probably catering to advertisers that don't want users disabling their flashlight app's access to location/contacts/photos

Find my Device...

[Trax3001BBS]

I've had this ability for a long time now. I picked up a Bluetooth key-chain dongle from T-mobile, it only only started working properly at version 6.

I can press the Key-chain dongle and find my phone, or use the phone to find my keys (with GPS location). It's very kool.

Dongle ran just under $30, and requires Motorola Connect (play store).

My favorite feature

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the one where Google shills buy an article on Slashdot asking what your favorite feature is.

Root? Watch this space

[Trax3001BBS]

KingRoot https://forum.xda-developers.c...
No spam, not a pirate site.

Re:Root? Watch this space

[Anonymous Coward]

>trusting your smartphone to the Chinese

Sure thing, boss.

Re:Root? Watch this space

[Trax3001BBS]

>trusting your smartphone to the Chinese

Sure thing, boss.

It's the site I trust and see them to watching out for me. They are/host(?) LineageOS now, were CyanogenMOD, and my site to pick up new ROMS for my Xoom tablet (when TOS allowed - TIC). https://forum.xda-developers.c...

Treble \ Updates

[SumDog]

The most important feature doesn't seem to be mentioned: Treble.

https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/treble

This could be crucial in fixing a lot of the drivers/userspace/abi development issues by creating stable interfaces for manufacture hardware (instead of each vendor patching the fuck out of the kernel with their shitty drivers and tons of binary blobs). It could bring us closer to easily being able to put ASOP right on any phone, just like installing Windows fresh on a new laptop. ..but more than likely Google and the vendors will still fuck this up somehow and we'll end up with this mess:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah stable ABIs however will never make it into the mainstream kernel. This feature has been requested since Linux 0.0.1. Apparently the Linux devs hate stable ABIs, their main issue with it is, that it does not force vendors into releasing opensource drivers. How well this has worked out in the mobile space we can see already. Providers simply provide ABI updates for 1-2 years after that your phone is obsolete.
Good thing that google provides something like this finally, bad thing is, google will have to backport the abi layer for every point revision of the Linux kernel.

Re:Treble \ Updates

[MemoryDragon]

Problem is this will never make it into the Mainstream kernel. The Linux Kernel devs have opposed a stable driver ABI for decades now. The chipset manufacturers have happily setteled in and provide only binary blobs with ABI adaptions for a certain timeframe, and everybody is happy except for the screwed customers.

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

The Linux Kernel devs have opposed a stable driver ABI for decades now.

Yeah, they've opposed it so much that they've said "you write it, you maintain it" to anyone who wanted it.

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Android stable kernel ABI is "solved" since a long time by Google being stuck on 8 year old kernels...
Plus the kernel parts are OpenSource due to GPL.
The problem is the huge mess of in-between parts.
The kernel interface is NOT the problem, and not what they are trying to solve.

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Kjella]

Problem is this will never make it into the Mainstream kernel. The Linux Kernel devs have opposed a stable driver ABI for decades now. The chipset manufacturers have happily setteled in and provide only binary blobs with ABI adaptions for a certain timeframe, and everybody is happy except for the screwed customers.

Considering there is more than two billion active Android devices I doubt Google cares much, when you take away all the desktop device drivers, architectures and other bits of Linux that aren't that relevant for Android how many core changes are there? And if they dedicate one cent per device to maintaining a fork, that's $20 million.

Re:Treble \ Updates

[swillden]

Problem is this will never make it into the Mainstream kernel.

Treble has nothing to do with the kernel.

(Disclosure/disclaimer: I'm a Google Android engineer. I own two hardware abstraction layers in Android, meaning I define their requirements, write the specifications, create the interfaces, write the client code in the Android system that uses them, write the reference implementations and work with vendors to validate their implementations. So.... I know this shit :-). On the other hand, I'm not part of the Treble team, don't participate in long-term OS-level planning, and what I'm giving you is my worm's-eye view of the goals. You can trust the stuff I tell you about how it works. Take my comments about long-term goals and ecosystem effects with a pound of salt.)

Android has a set of Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) interfaces that mediate between the Android system services and the kernel. Traditionally, this layer has been fuzzy. Google has always created and published the HAL interfaces in AOSP, and written client software that uses them, but device makers have been free to modify all of it. They add new HALs, modify the existing HALs and change the code above the HAL interface to use their changes. Android has long had the Compliance Test Suite (CTS) that validates that the app-visible behavior is consistent across devices, so that apps will run everywhere, but everything below that has been mutable.

Treble is about making the HAL interface solid and closing it off to modification by device makers. Treble introduced a new HAL communications infrastructure that uses a modified form of Binder (Android's long-used IPC mechanism) for communications between system components and HALs. It also adds a Vendor Test Suite (VTS) that device makers will have to pass to be able to call their devices "Android", and VTS runs directly against the HAL interface. This ensures that vendors can't change the hardware interfaces. They can still create their own HALs, but they cannot add to, subtract from, or modify the semantics of the methods of the standard HALs.

Treble also creates a hard separation between the /system and /vendor partitions, and sets a firm requirement that nothing in /vendor can depend on anything in /system. All of the HAL implementations live in /vendor, and all of Android lives in /system. The kernel isn't in either, of course, and stuff in /vendor can and does depend on kernel version-specific features... but /system does not and cannot directly depend on kernel features.

This means that once the Treble vision is fully realized (and it's going to be a process; this is a huge change which may take device makers a couple of years to get fully up to speed on), it will be possible to flash a standard AOSP build onto any device with an unlockable bootloader, with confidence that it will be able to use the HALs in /vendor correctly. In theory, the device maker should even be able to continue updating /vendor and the kernel even though the system is AOSP. Any custom HALs provided by the device maker will not be loaded or used by a vanilla AOSP build, of course.

What's even better is that this and some other changes to verified boot infrastructure move us toward a world where it will be feasible for device makers to turn updating of /system over to Google. Not that they'll have to, but especially for smaller players it will be hugely attractive to be able to push the burden of managing updates off on Google. They'll still be responsible for maintaining /vendor and the boot image (kernel), of course. There's still a lot more work to be done before that can actually happen (i.e. the work in Oreo isn't enough), and the carriers are going to have to figure out how they're going to handle their testing processes, but Treble makes it possible.

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

So they re-made DirectX/OpenGL ?

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you so much for taking the time to post.

Re: Treble \ Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Google engineer can you comment on James Damore's post about gender inequality at Google and his subsequent firing?

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 insightful

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Threni]

Could you please clarify:

"This means that once the Treble vision is fully realized (and it's going to be a process; this is a huge change which may take device makers a couple of years to get fully up to speed on)"

Are you saying that potentially some Oreo devices will not actually have Treble deployed? How would these be identified? We're not going to find out until Android Q comes out and isn't available for that device, are we?

Re:Treble \ Updates

[swillden]

Are you saying that potentially some Oreo devices will not actually have Treble deployed?

No, it's not some devices will/won't, it's that there's more work to be done beyond O to fully achieve the broadest version of the goals. I can see how I worded that statement badly. Sorry about that.

Re:Treble \ Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you break down what's provided in O vs what's needed for the ultimate goal?

Re:Treble \ Updates

[swillden]

Can you break down what's provided in O vs what's needed for the ultimate goal?

Not with any degree of confidence. Someone on the Treble team could. I'm sure I'd get it wrong, so it's probably better that I not guess.

the part about google PR passing for an article

[Anonymous Coward]

that's my favorite, also the siphoning of all my data, second fav, for sure

Re:Meanwhile Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to complain about Android restarting your whole damn app whenever the user changes orientation. I can see some Android engineer saying, "it's too difficult for developers to respond to ORIENTATION_CHANGED events, let's just restart the whole goddamned app and make them check the orientation in the Activity's init handler." wtf???

Really Hacker News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? We are quoting Hacker News for articles now? Whatever happened to Ask Slashdot and made Slashdot start asking us to enumerate singularily positive things about X? I guess it's at least sortof on topic versus the rest of the things posted lately..

The creamy filling

[UltraZelda64]

Least favorite feature? The shell. I don't care for chocolate.

Oh... *that* Oreo. I don't know, because this is the first I heard of Android Oreo, and I don't care because who knows when (and if) it will ever be pushed to my HTC 10...

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

1. 1. Made it more difficult to install apps that aren't from Google.
2. 2. A centralised place for hackers to get all your data.
3. 3. A tiny video you can't actually see blocking the text you are trying to read
4. 4. Google able to remove any app they don't like that you have installed
5. 5. Automatic connections to unknown hackers' access points
6. 7. Web 2.0 like it was 1999
7. 8. Making it more difficult to automate your phone on your own terms
8. 9. More spying on what you are doing
9. 10. More annoying things you have to configure for every app
10. 11. More spying on where you are going
11. 12. The only feature that everyone has been waiting for .... MORE EMOJIS!!!!!!!!

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

13. The removal of the number 6 from the device. It is an evil number.

Missing Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite feature, obviously missing from the list, is banning scumbag OEMs like Lenovo from the Android ecosystem until they get their shit together to provide at least two major Android updates to all of their devices.

They're still selling brand new devices with Marshmallow and won't provide updates to Nougat 7.0, 7.1 nor 7.1.1? Seriously?

AI - whats my role in life

[Anonymous Coward]

AI-based Smart Text Selection:

Ala rick and morty: "Your role is to pass butter."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Alternative needed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame the Ubuntu phone never happened.
We need a real alternative to android and iphone

Re:Alternative needed

[Anonymous Coward]

ONLY Scopes can scope really scopy scopes, not LUDDITE Android. Scopers wanna scope.

Scopes!

Wait

[Trogre]

No More 'Install From Unknown Sources' Setting

F-Droid still works though, right?

Re:Wait

[Stormwatch]

You can still install from unknown sources, only now the system manages that in a more fine-grained way. Read: https://www.androidcentral.com...

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read that my first though was "Sounds like a bug rather than a feature".
It's like reading a changelist for Windows 10.
"Hi, we have added a feature that maybe 1% of the users might want, we also added a bunch of stuff that made the OS unusable."

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

According to that document they are still doing it wrong.

That means that if I download an app from ApkMirror, I need to give the frickin browser access to install apps. Welcome to Intenet Explorer 4.

FFS, those apps were downloaded from Google Play in the first place, they should have a Google Play signature, and THAT is what should be approved. Then I could approve F-Droid and Google Play, and not worry about the browser.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any way to download an apk from the playstore?

Re:Wait

[Junta]

I'll agree that allowing by the application doesn't make sense, and the thing that really makes sense is the same pattern seen in dnf/yum/apt: You add trusted repositories.

Trusting the package signatures is a challenge as an exploitable package might have a valid signature and the mechanism to mitigate damage is generally to remove it from the repositories from spreading, rather than some impractical package signature revocation process.

I'd settle for

[bobstreo]

An upgrade for my 2 year old phone to Android N,

O will never be available for any of the 6 or so android devices I currently own. So there's that.

What about the new layer for vendor/drivers?

[mdkathon]

I would hope that this will allow custom ROM development to ease in complexity. In reference to 'Project Treble'. No idea if that's the case, but gosh, I would like that to be.

Backup or clone my phone would be nice

[JvdN]

Recovering from a broken or lost phone is a major PITA. I want to backup/clone a phone, with all apps and app settings and data.

Re:Backup or clone my phone would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP) is an open-source software custom recovery image for Android-based devices.[3][4] It provides a touchscreen-enabled interface that allows users to install third-party firmware and back up the current system, functions often unsupported by stock recovery images.[4][5][6][7] It is, therefore, often installed when rooting Android devices,[8] although it isn't dependent on a device being rooted to be installed.
https://twrp.me/

ClockworkMod Recovery is an Android custom recovery image. Once installed, this recovery image replaces your Android device's stock recovery image. Using this recovery image, various system-level operations can be performed. For example, one can create and restore partition backups, root, install / repair / upgrade system software and/or custom ROMs, and use other developer tools.
https://www.clockworkmod.com/

Don't buy a phone without verifying it is unlocked or capable of being unlocked.

Re:Backup or clone my phone would be nice

[green1]

I've found it's app dependent, but this week when I re-flashed my phone I was surprised at how many apps already do this automatically. If the phone is linked to your google account (as is the default) all your apps will be back, and most of them will have all your settings intact.

There are a few notable exceptions:
- text messages don't get backed up automatically, I use a special app for this
- wallpapers, widgets, and icon placements don't get backed up, had to restore them manually

WiFi Aware

[duke_cheetah2003]

Wi-Fi Aware (Neighborhood Aware Networking -- NAN): Android Oreo has added support for a new connectivity feature called Wi-Fi Aware, also known as Neighborhood Aware Networking (NAN), which allows apps and devices to automatically find, connect to, and share data with each other directly without any internet access point or cellular data.

This sounds really creepy. And ripe for misuse.

Re:WiFi Aware

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this how my phone already works when it connects to my camera.

Re:WiFi Aware

[swillden]

Wi-Fi Aware (Neighborhood Aware Networking -- NAN): Android Oreo has added support for a new connectivity feature called Wi-Fi Aware, also known as Neighborhood Aware Networking (NAN), which allows apps and devices to automatically find, connect to, and share data with each other directly without any internet access point or cellular data.

This sounds really creepy. And ripe for misuse.

It doesn't happen without user approval and participation. There's a pairing step involved. Think of this as Bluetooth on steroids. It provides easy, wireless, infrastructure-less inter-device communications just like Bluetooth, but at Wifi ranges and speeds. And with Wifi power consumption, but since this should only be used for data communications that move a lot of data, that should be okay. If you draw 10X the current but complete the job in 1/100th the time, you've used 1/10th the power.

Re:WiFi Aware

[swillden]

Isn't this how my phone already works when it connects to my camera.

Assuming your camera is setting up a Wifi access point and you phone is connecting to that, then yes, like that. Except a lot easier to set up.

My camera does that, too. It works, but it's a little fiddly.

Re:WiFi Aware

[magic_user]

So how is this any different from WiFi Direct, which has been available for years?

Re:WiFi Aware

[Anonymous Coward]

> This sounds really creepy.

It's primarily about service discovery:

https://www.wi-fi.org/news-events/newsroom/wi-fi-aware-to-bring-proximity-based-service-discovery-to-wi-fi-certified

If I were black, I think I might be offended...

[jtara]

... by the name.

What were they thinking?

But what do I know?

Signed:

    - a honky from Detroit (south of 8 Mile Road... like, as in... actual Detroit)

Re:If I were black, I think I might be offended...

[jtara]

P.S. There is no such place as "South Detroit". It's called "Windsor, Ontario". That still bugs me. Steve Perry admits he didn't have a clue. It "sounded good".

So did Oreo....

Re:Meanwhile Apple

[jtara]

You forgot to complain about Android restarting your whole damn app whenever the user changes orientation.

You mean in Oreo, right? RLLY? WTF?

If you don't mean in Oreo, I guess it must be because I'm an NDK kinda guy. Because I can rotate the f*** out of my s***. But haven't tried Oreo. Yet.

Geez. You mean this?

Number 7 worries me

[Geeky]

I'm a bit worried that no.7 will break apps that do useful things in the background, such as Tasker and similar automation apps. I also wonder how it will impact apps that do geofencing.

If I recall, there are changes that app developers need to make to continue to work in the background, and it could be some time before apps catch up.

Overall I'm not comfortable with the move to greater restriction. I use Android instead of iOS precisely because it has greater flexibility.

Re:Number 7 worries me

[Vegan Cyclist]

Not sure if this has been fixed for Strava yet, but ever since upgrading to 7 if it's running while 'battery save' mode is on, it doesn't work and the GPS is shut off (unless the screen is on.) Wonder if this is one of these 'features' in effect..? Would like to see an option where I can exclude apps from battery saver mode..

(Strava is a popular free app that tracks cycling, running, etc.. Usually you just turn it on, and do your activity, save it when finished, track your total distance, etc.)

IPX 9

[goombah99]

The new IPX 9 standard makes it less soggy when you dip it in milk

Re:If you're retarded, you might be offended...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone in the US should know by now that Oreo is the name of a cookie, so anyone offended by the name Oreo needs to grow the fuck up. The cookie has existed since 1912, so there's really no confusion about what the name means. Also, nobody outside of Detroit cares what Oreo means to people in Detroit.

As a dev AND a user...

[cloud.pt]

I see absolutely nothing exciting in that list. Not even Treble, nor the new "updates without taking any space" feature seems anything cutting-edge for my own uses, but might be good for developing countries where most phones have 2-16gb of storage, and maybe half that available for user-space.

As a developer, the only thing that gets me excited is third-party In-Call Screen APIs finally being made available, after 2 major OS versions started showing documentation for it but never actually allowing anything. And the only thing that ticks my nerves is android ID going down the drain.

Actually, add that 3rd-party incall screen as a user-feature too - it will be a glorious time when we have a store-bound caller replacement app that can solve the lack of features of the standard and OEM-customized launchers, and also nullify the learning curve of changing between Android flavors.

Audio Loudness increase..

[lordmage]

When will Android allow for the 100% + loudness increase? People who are partially deaf have a hard enough time with the ear pieces... but also the increasingly loud environment can override bluetooth earpieces. To combat that, ever increasing hardware is purchased and Rooting overrides some of the locks by Samsung, etc.

However, Allow android to overdrive the hardware would fix a lot of issues. Let the consumer, ME, make the choice.

VLC really is nice in Windows because it does somehow overdrive the sound. I get more out of it + Windows + max device than any other item.

Maybe others have solutions? See Root ROMS that have increased Audio to know that this is a problem.

Re:Audio Loudness increase..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just partially deaf people. It's anybody who uses a headset with active noise cancellation, because those need a louder Bluetooth signal to even be audible (and they have their own volume controls anyway) or cars where you have the same problem--the volume has to be up past "normal" for headphones to even be audible. But no, Samsung and their crappy ass lawyers know what's best for us with that damned warning popping up ALL THE DAMNED TIME when I'm trying to, you know, make my phone do what I want it to do.

Re:Audio Loudness increase..

[lordmage]

Exactly my point. I use a rooted ROM to avoid that extra question plus the ROM increases the audio at least 33% for maximum loudness.

I am not sure if I am partially deaf, noise cancellation, or getting older it is harder to distinguish between background and other sounds. Metal 4ever :)

Review it again in a year

[Anonymous Coward]

When almost a quarter of the people will actually get the update (the other 3/4th won't get it at all). And that's being very generous.

Most people don't even get the monthly security updates except once every few months and its never the latest one.

They should really work on making it easier to update without having to depend on the device manufacturers and then the carriers, neither of which give a fuck, to maybe update their users, if they're lucky.

How about "I don't know yet"?

[Qbertino]

Because it hasn't been rolled out to my phone yet. Just like with 1.5 Billion other android users on the planet. Ask this question in 4-5 months again.

Android?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that still a thing, people actually still use Android?

Re:Android?

[green1]

At last check, only about 87% of the smartphone market was on Android, so no, hardly anyone uses it.

volume

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if they would add more than 16 volume levels.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Ambient display UX fix

[greeze]

My favorite feature isn't mentioned. It's a very tiny tweak to how ambient display works, and it makes all the difference to me. I've actually turned "Lift to check phone" back on again because of it.

Previously, the ambient display could too-easily be tapped or swiped such that the ambient display would become the full screen-on display. If you had the Smart Unlock body-detection enabled, that could easily lead to unlocking the phone in your pocket. From there comes accidental app launches, battery drain, etc. Also, ambient display used to present interactive media controls if you had a media player running, so you might accidentally tap "play" on your music app when all you wanted to do was check the time.

Now, ambient display requires a double-tap to go to the full screen-on display. A single tap or a swipe isn't enough. This makes a huge difference and makes it far less likely that I'll accidentally turn on the screen and unlock my phone. It also no longer gives you interactive controls on the ambient display, but still presents them on the full lock screen. No more accidental taps on media controls just because I want to see what time it is.

These changes seem very tiny, but represent a major UX improvement to a feature that always had great potential.

Feature complete?

[fred6666]

I know an OS is never "done", but I stopped caring about new features from Android updates long ago. It seems it's already doing everything I need it to do, and new features are either marginal improvements or features I just won't use.

Re:Feature complete?

[jbmartin6]

How are you supposed to get settings and other interface elements moved around for no reason?

Re:Feature complete?

[Myrdos]

I have a feature called "give the phone to my toddler". It periodically auto-activates in the background when it detects the phone is not in use. "Enter Password" can be used to disable this feature, but that introduces bug #098312 - erroneous phone calls to emergency services.

Re:Feature complete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, I thought the 6.0 feature where you could selectively grant apps permissions was nice.

Now I just need to upgrade my 2.3 phone to that version...

Re:Feature complete?

[Baleet]

Agreed. As an adult who pays his own way, I have other things to spend money on. My Moto G4 is an all-around OK device with pretty good quality at what I thought was a fairly reasonable price, and as a bonus, it does everything I need (emphasis on NEED) it to do, and anything beyond that is a bonus.

Find My Device... huh?

[PortHaven]

"10. Find my Device: Google has introduced a new feature, called Find my Device, which is a similar feature to Apple's Find my iPhone and allows people to locate, lock and wipe their Android devices in the event when they go missing or get stolen."

I've been using this for years....perhaps they mean a user interface update for it.

Look to ZTE

[PortHaven]

I have three ZTE Zmax Pro's for my kids. They were $175, with decent screens, memory, power, and USB Type-C. Great buy. Zero problems...

I just want an x86 computer in a droid3 case.

[Anonymous Coward]

That can pinch zoom, and run legacy Linux, Windows, wahtever.. OQO, Soney UX Flipstart, we were on our way(but all too large), then they just dropped it for Android/iphone crap.

Autofill API Sounds Nice

[Riddler Sensei]

I like the look of the Autofill API. Using Lastpass on Android always felt a little slow, iffy, and like they hacked together a solution that "technically" works but is not officially sanctioned (nothing against the engineers, it's just that you do the best you can with what you got). I can imagine the current code being some sort of pre-amble to detect the type of activity that is on the top of the stack and dispatching to the appropriate hack du jour.

Re:Find My Device? Not if using Google 2 Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Couple of things. Two factor only requires you have your phone the first time you log in, not every time, so in almost all cases you will have already authenticated your computer. If not, there are backup codes for two factor you should have just for situations like this. When you first set up two factor you can generate a set of 10 or so codes that you keep in a safe place (I have mine in a lastpass note).

Real Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't we just run normal Linux distros on these phones?

The CPU is fast enough, and there is plenty of storage and RAM.

And Gnome folk have been dumbing down the interface for years now to make it like a phone anyways.

So why can't I just load Fedora on my phone?

meh

[DulcetTone]

We have really reached the end of smartphones. I read breathless posts of updates and new phones and realize ... I just don't care for what my Pixel cannot currently do.

Re:meh

[green1]

I have to agree. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. It's several years old now, so I thought maybe I should get something newer. Only problem is that every newer phone is in one way or other a downgrade from what I currently have.

I was excited about the new phones with 6" displays instead of the 5.7" display that I currently have, until I learned that they're 18:9 instead of 16:9 meaning that they're actually narrower than what I currently have. Nope, not a chance! (I think they're larger numbers for marketing, but actually smaller in square inches for manufacturing)

Then I realized that nobody seems to make a phone that still has a removable battery, considering I'm on my 3rd battery since the phone was new, I'm not really ready to give up that feature yet. (I think this one is just to try to force you to buy a new phone every year and a half when the battery dies instead of buying a $20 battery)

And I also see that many phones are ditching the headphone jack I use all the time, and none of the new phones with their fancy USB-C connectors still support MHL, another feature I use all the time. "Use wireless headphones" they scream, but ignore other use cases like tying in to my existing stereo system, or my wife's car's "line in". They tell you to use "cast" for watching video from the phone on your TV, and then ignore that many video sources either don't support it, or actively block it "because piracy".

Most phones have also moved the fingerprint sensor to the back of the phone, making it impossible to unlock without picking up the phone, no thanks.

It also seems many of the newer phones are getting harder to root, and even harder to maintain safetynet (for android pay) once you have due to various bootloader tricks. I'm not willing to give up my ad-blocking and firewalls.

So what would I gain with a newer phone? a slightly faster processor, but my existing one never seems to lag. They say the camera is better on many of the new phones, but honestly I've never had any complaints about my current one. Some of the new ones are waterproof, but if I haven't killed my Note4 that way yet, I don't think it's a pressing concern. As for software... much of the list at the top of the article I already have: "instant apps" (also known as webpages), picture in picture (never use it), find my device (this is ancient now), new emoji (needed root, but I did it), I have all of those, and the remaining things don't look like anything I should want or care about.

So what killer feature do any of the new phones have that I don't have on my old Note 4?

I can't wait

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I'm sure my Moto X Play will be updated to 8.0 any day now.

Aaaaaany day now.

Fuck you, Motorola.

Re:Find My Device? Not if using Google 2 Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

For exactly this (and similar "don't have a phone" scenarios) scenario you printed the six backup codes out and placed them somewhere secure when you activated 2FA. It's one of the things Google reminds you about in the yearly account security check.

Re:Find My Device? Not if using Google 2 Factor

[green1]

You can also authorize multiple phones, so my wife's phone is authorized as 2fa on my account, that allows me to find and wipe my phone by using 2fa on her phone.

My phone's got a 1080p screen

[rsilvergun]

So I can totally run the PiP mode at 480p. Now I just need one of these on my phone....

Re:My phone's got a 1080p screen

[Anonymous Coward]

So I can totally run the PiP mode at 480p. Now I just need one of these on my phone....

No... now what you need is Verizon!

Wi-Fi Aware (Neighborhood Aware Networking -- NAN)

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire future this could be greatest thing ever needs an app you ask and it goes from phone to phone till it finds retrives and phone to phone it back to you.
Not just what is on one hop.

Is "Find My Device" really anything new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please correct me if I'm missing a nuance here, but "Find My Device" isn't anything new to Android. It's possible this currently runs as a default application rather than being baked into the OS, but at the very least, "Google has introduced a new feature, called Find my Device" is a bit misleading.

I only know what Google has announced

[JohnFen]

I don't have first-hand experience with any of the new features, so I'm speculating here. But it doesn't look like any of the new stuff in Oreo interests me very much.

Girlfriend finder

[imcdona]

Imagine using a NAN aware dating app. Upon opening the app it could display all nearby singles looking for a date. The same could be done with Bluetooth but nobody has done it yet.

You mean Ad-Hoc

[Anonymous Coward]

#5 is simply Ad-Hoc. This isn't anything new, they just gave it a different name. Ad-Hoc is very common on most portable WiFi enabled gaming devices to connect to others without a router or AP.

Thank heavens, FINALLY...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank heavens, FINALLY we are going to get some new emojis.

Picture-in-Picture

[irrational_design]

Has anyone ever actually used Picture-in-Picture? I've had a number of different devices that have this feature, but I've never found a use case for it. If I'm watching something I want to concentrate on watching it. If I'm working on something I want to concentrate on that without some extraneous video distracting me.

Re:Find My Device? Not if using Google 2 Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the backup paper 2fa you set up when you turned 2fa on in the first place.

Privacy by design

[mrwireless]

With the upcoming GDPR going into effect I would have expected more privacy features.

Perhaps something for Android P:

- Individual granting of app permissions with more depth than the current system. The current implementation protects Google's own interests.
- Android-side implementation of things like Bluetooth's new privacy features, if at all possible.
- Not broadcasting wifi SSID's that you're visited before.
- Allowing for better integration of things like TOR, to for example route DNS requests through TOR.

On the market side:
- A way to sort apps in Google Play by number of permissions needed. A flashlight app that needs 28 permissions? No thanks!
- Make a smooth streamlined market for privacy features, like buying a subscription to third-party VPN access with your Google credit at the push of a button.

Android: now with BloatWare

[Noishkel]

I can honestly not one damn feature of this new version of Android interested me AT ALL. And it will defiantly be one more program I will hard disable in my phone.

Ongoing notification

[tepples]

An app is exempt from the background service restrictions if it uses a foreground service, that is, with an ongoing notification in the notification area.

Re:Find My Device? Not if using Google 2 Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Use your emergency codes. You did print out the emergency codes like they said right?

You can still use it to make calls!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the best thing about it!

Feature request

[mannd]

I'd like a feature whereby my phone actually gets updated to the latest Android version rather than being stuck on KitKat.