Best Android N Features

Top 5 Android N Features

Most people don’t even have Android M yet and we’re already getting a preview of the next version Android N. Yup it’s earlier than normal this year before Google IO and everything. It’s loaded on this Nexus 6P. So let’s take a look at the best new features of Android N and so it’s going to be a lot of smaller stuff first of all.

Settings App

So number one a redesigned settings app so you can see it looks pretty similar to the marshmallow settings out but in each category, it’s starting to take advantage of the larger screens these phones have. And showing you a little information inside it before you have to click it so with the battery without clicking it to see how much battery you have left. Storage tells you how much space you have open wifi and Bluetooth tell you what you’re connected to before you even open the settings so that’s pretty cool. Then you have when you do click into a setting you get a new option which is a swipe outside menu with links to all the other settings so you can use this bar to sort of navigate between sub menus. If you know where you want to go and it’s pretty quick. I don’t know if this actually saves any steps as far as the number of clicks. But it works well and you can kind of memorize where your most new settings are on the list. So you can definitely get to them pretty quickly this way actually like the way it looks in landscape I don’t use my phone to landscape that much but it looks like the settings from Android Honeycomb back in the old tablet days taking advantage of the bigger screen right.

Notifications

Number two is redesigned notifications. So you can see your notifications are a bit wider. Now they take up the whole width of the display and they show a lot more information. Again really taking advantage of the bigger high-resolution displays we have and you can tap the little down arrow to expand or contract notifications or you can stick to the two finger drag which is a lot easier to get that more information. Then some apps i.e., first-party apps like Gmail well you expand so much that you can actually take individual action on each item so notifications are bundled. As they come in but once you expand it. You can archive emails like one by one or pick a single email to take an action on like a reply. I think more apps will start to pick this up too. So if you get like three twitter notifications you can choose what to do with each one after you expand so I like this and you also now have a half swipe over to get to notification settings for that app. I kind of liked the long press better but that’s how you do it now and some apps will support inline replies in the notifications. So like hangouts, for example, the new hangouts app only reply to a message without ever leaving the notification panel and then get back to what you’re doing. Again a lot of the stuff is new functionality to take advantage of or bigger screens. I like it.

Quick Settings

So number three is redesigned quick settings up top. This is something we’ve seen in skin versions of Android before actually so the sense touch was but now you can just pull down once and have these quick titles to frequently use functions like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or your flashlight or whatever and when you pull down again that’s when you get to your quick settings that you’re familiar with with the bigger panel and it’s paginated so you can swipe across between screens as many as you want here and there’s also a new edit button right up front so you can go in there and move stuff around move stuff in move stuff out move stuff into the top five. So it becomes a quick setting. It’s cetera so this is classic Android full on customization fun you can really set the most use functions right up top to be at your fingertips.

Multi-Tasking

Number four is a redesigned multitasking. Sothis is definitely my new favorite change in Android and so right off the bat, the multitasking cards are way bigger. So it’s you see more info in your last used app on the screen which is pretty cool and then when you’re in an app and you hit the multitasking button. It brings the app you’re in way down to the bottom because you don want to go back into that same app done up acts and a lot. So now when you hit the button it just gets out the way and shows you a big card of your second to last most used app. So now what it gets right is one of my favorite editions which is the double tap it kind of acts like quick apps which are and swaps back with your most recently used聽App. I think it’s awesome. It’s handy for quick copy-paste stuff or just going back and forth between two apps you use a lot like Twitter and Reddit and back to Twitter. Whatever you’re doing. It’s pretty handy and then new to stock Andrade we now have split screen multitasking so when you’re in an app you hold the multitasking button and take another app and then you’re in and this is awesome weekend used to only see this in Skins but now you can grab the bar in the middle and resize the multitasking windows or use the bar to close went out entirely. I got to say for a developer preview this is really smooth like I didn’t expect it to be this good at all but it’s nice and stable and it works works and landscape too so I’m hoping I’m hoping that a bunch of apps. Now that this isn’t a developer preview will quickly support this in a few months down the road so we get this new version early after voters get to build it in and then when the new version of Android comes out like a new Nexus almost everyone’s apps already works with split screen.

Dark Mode

Last but not least is the dark mode that kind of buried in the last Android N developer preview but again we have a functional night mode in Android which essentially reverses the colors in a major core apps like settings to be dark behind the green which can be useful if you’re using your phone at night or at someplace where you don’t want to blast light everywhere. It still is in system tuners so you don’t exactly have it at your fingertips but you do get to dig in and mess around with it and it even has a feature to automatically turn on at sunset kind of like the night mode and Google Maps nice. So there you have it if there’s a bunch of other little stuff here and there like an improved doze that she even work to help save battery life when the phone is in your pocket and is also a data saver mode so when you just know you’re going to run out of data you can kind of keep your phone in check there but that’s the best of what’s new in Android N so far. Again it’s just a developer preview number one. So more changes and features will be added before the final version this summer. Yes, the after is still here. Looks like we’re keeping that. But let me know if you think What’s your favorite new item. Personally, I’m all about that double tap apps which are but that’s just me.