Android O Is Now Available For Devs Ahead of Planned Fall 2017 Launch

The latest version of Android 0 is now available for Devs ahead of the planned launch in fall 2017. As usual, they are releasing the developer preview nice and early, meaning developers will get plenty of time to make any alterations to existing apps, and get ahead of the game in development of new apps.

For a long time, one of the biggest complaints about Android, is its ability to suck the life from your battery. Even if you’re not using your device, the battery life can be greatly affected by background processes. With Android O, a lot of the focus is dealing with the way apps and system features work in the background, and developers will have to adjust their apps accordingly, it seems Android O will be far less forgiving to apps that abuse your phone when you’re not looking.

According to the Developer Preview;

In order to preserve battery, user experience, and system health, background apps receive location updates less frequently when used on a device running Android O. This behavior change affects all apps that receive location updates, including Google Play services.

As we know, location services can indeed drain your battery, and it’s usually a good idea to have it turned off, although this can occasionally stop some apps from working, it feels like a no win situation. Thankfully, it looks as though they are looking at changing this and to be fair to Google, they are even including their own services. This will hopefully mean battery life can be extended, and we might actually be able to have apps running as intended.

There is an awful lot of details to go through, so I’ll leave a link to the Developer Preview here for your viewing pleasure.

What other features would you like to see added to Android O? What should they call it, Oreo?