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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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
slashdot: A failed experiment.
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"?
#DeleteFacebook
That's gonna be interesting watching a 96x54 pixel YouTube video while you read your report 3 words at a time.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
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?
There's no feature that makes me feel like I need Android O.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
How is this new? It's been available for years.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
No one cares.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Is dhcp6 client still missing?
would be finding Oreo on a sub $400 phone. I am done paying $600+ for a phone that stops getting updates after 3 months.
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.
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.
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).
KingRoot https://forum.xda-developers.c...
No spam, not a pirate site.
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/
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...
No More 'Install From Unknown Sources' Setting
F-Droid still works though, right?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.
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.
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.
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...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
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.
... 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)
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?
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.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
The new IPX 9 standard makes it less soggy when you dip it in milk
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
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.
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.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
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.
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
"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.
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 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.
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?
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.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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.
tone
I'm sure my Moto X Play will be updated to 8.0 any day now.
Aaaaaany day now.
Fuck you, Motorola.
Eat the rich.
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.
So I can totally run the PiP mode at 480p. Now I just need one of these on my phone....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Nothing here will block f-droid, the only difference is that you'll need to approve the installs each time, hardly a major problem.
At last check, only about 87% of the smartphone market was on Android, so no, hardly anyone uses it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. ;-)
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
I'll probably get eaten alive for saying this, but can you get an Ubuntu phone?
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.
I'd like a feature whereby my phone actually gets updated to the latest Android version rather than being stuck on KitKat.
Sig expected Real Soon Now.