Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen i'm joe hindi from android a30 comm and it's that time of year when google starts giving us presents we all now have android p and it's time to take a closer look the first thing we'll look at are some of the UI changes as per the norm there are no major league changes this year but rather some colourful tweaks here and there to improve or otherwise optimize the UI to start with the startup screen and experience is a little bit different than it was before it does all the same stuff that it used to do but it just looks a little bit different it's not a huge deal but we thought we'd mention it notifications got just a little bit better now messaging applications can show the last few messages in a conversation in case you want to continue it directly from the notification rather than opening the full app it also now shows stickers and things like that the improvements here basically put the entire application in your notification shade and honestly I wouldn't be shocked if they went the distance with that idea eventually the settings menu received yet another overhaul from last year the icons are more colourful and the whole thing is a little friendlier to look at in addition the quick settings also have more colorful and rounded icons the launcher actually does - in fact the whole UI looks a little more colourful and fun all around some may wish for a more professional UI but frankly the technology world could do with fewer stick shoved up their rear ends frankly I like it some other UI changes include the removal of the orange color when you turn on battery saver and addition the volume slider now sits on the side of the screen instead of on top and this is likely to improve usability on devices with a notch but we'll discuss the notch more later the power menu rests there as well and it now includes a new screenshot button we hope that one makes it a production cuz that would rock the biggest new UI feature is support for the oft ated but often imitated not the OS lets you play with the notch cut out I suspect so that people like me can make these videos and actually show you what it'll look like and for that I say thank you Google in any case you can simulate the notch if you really want to although I'm not really sure why any of us would since 2018 is probably going to be the year of the knotch it's good that Android people actually support it here's hoping that all those phones actually do get Android pee there are a myriad of smaller things as well such as a unified fingerprint scanner dialogue changes to controls while casting video and minor improvements to ambient display there are some bad things though root users and non-root users alike will lose the ability to use substratum theming in Android P since stock Android has no theming of its own yet that decision kind of sucks there aren't nearly as many big new features this year as there were in the last few years we don't have multi window or picture and picture level stuff to play around with this time around and it seems like Android P is really dealing more with under the hood stuff security and UI changes thus there really aren't any huge new features but there is at least one feature worth talking about Android P now lets you rotate your screen on a use by use basis even if your rotation is locked you rotate the screen and a little button pops up on the navigation bar at the bottom press it and the whole screen will rotate for you this feature is a tad buggy in the developer preview but we assume it'll get better over time it's a small thing but it's so nice to have now like we said it's not a good year for big new software features the majority of things this year are taking place in the UI under the hood or in regards to security it's not that big of a deal though since we've all been complaining about all of those things for the last few years as per the norm these days the majority of the changes are going to take place under the hood where we can't see them but companies can use them to make their phones better or more useful there is a giant list so we'll talk about the big ones and then maybe a few others but we'll have the list of all of them linked up in the video description below perhaps the biggest under the hood change comes with dual camera supports a new API let's devices and applications access multiple cameras at the same time given how dual cameras is now a thing that is for real here to stay it's good to see Android P keeping the OS updated for new technology in addition a host of new video and image codecs are going to be included those worried that their phones might not support the latest and greatest stuff shouldn't worry because Android P should add all of the popular new stuff like the hei F format that one day may kill off the JPEG along with continued support for the vp9 streaming video codec there is a new API for indoor positioning and Wi-Fi round-trip time this lets your phone connect to multiple Wi-Fi hotspots inside of a building so that it can better tell you where you are within that building Google says that the device will measure its distance between three nearby access points and then determine the position based on that it should actually be accurate within one to two meters and that's honestly impressive a couple of other new API is include a new image decoder API for bitmaps and drawable stuff as well as a new animation API that includes improvements to Kotlin and art as well consumers won't deal with these directly but it should help developers make better looking applications that do more things and that's always good news some stuff from previous versions of Android received updates and improvements as well notification channels can do a few more things and there are also a couple of new do not disturb priority categories for those who really want to customize that doze mode gets another round of updates and optimizations for even better battery life and autofill is getting some improvements as well accessibility navigation tooltips dialogue a neural network API and window changing details are all in the mix as well again we have all that linked up in the video description below if you want to learn more about that stuff Google security measures have been pretty big over the years the start of monthly security updates was Google's idea and last year we got Google Play protect which is basically an antivirus that Google runs from within Google Play this year we're getting some more awesome stuff with Android pay for starters Android pay will block access to sensors microphone and camera to applications that aren't currently active that means no applications can passively listen or turn your camera on in the background on one hand this is great because it means no applications can spy on you we would like to see how this affects anti-theft apps like Cerberus however where it may need to engage the camera remotely to take a picture of the thief we assume it won't mess with that functionality too much Android pee does a few other small things to improve security as well it will now fake MAC addresses when you connect to public Wi-Fi so that you can't be tracked so easily additionally it'll do a better job of protecting your unique Device Identifier improve sensitive data transactions and even warn us the consumer when we're using old apps that aren't on the latest ap is since those could present security risks and performance issues Android P also enables encryption of locally stored Android backups people will need their pin password pattern etc in order to restore data from these encrypted backups finally Android P will block cryptid HTTP traffic by default and that should help security out quite a bit however applications do need to be updated to the latest SDK before that becomes a real thing otherwise they will perform as they always have it's important to keep in mind that this is the first developer preview of the year that means a lot of this stuff is up for grabs in terms of changes in removal and it also means that there will certainly be more changes and improvements coming down the line as the OS matures this really is a developer preview of Android P meaning that it's for developers to make their apps work with the OS before it becomes standard according to Google the next developer preview should come in early May and that should bring more stability and improvements to more are coming in June with the third developer preview finalizing the api's for the fold release there will be one more Developer Preview sometime after July but before release in quarter three of this year thus if you find that Android P just isn't good enough yet you really don't have that long to wait in our testing we ran into the usual array of small bugs and issues but nothing so bad is to affect pure usability we of course wouldn't recommend using this as a daily driver because it is an alpha and alphas have all kinds of nasty little surprises that even we may have missed if you really must use it we recommend familiarizing yourself with how to roll back to Oreo first just in case you need to otherwise this is it folks this is Android pee so far we have a bunch of articles on the topic linked up in the video description below and we do have some more videos coming through the pipeline we'll keep you updated as Android pee matures as for the name your guess is as good as mine at this point I totally wanted it to be Android Pi but the easter egg makes a good case for Google going with Android peppermint if you want to wager a guess leave us a comment and tell us what you want it to be oh wait I almost forgot this is what the Android pee Easter Egg looks like ok now I'm done and that about does it for this one folks don't forget to Like subscribe and ring the bell to get the latest android authority videos as soon as they come out because we are your source for all things Android as always thanks for watching everybody and have a wonderful day