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On Wednesday, Google released a preview of the next version of Android, under the code name "Android Q.". The final version should take place towards the end of the year, but for now, we have a version under development that will include several new versions during the year. The highlights of this release include new privacy and security controls, foldable folder support, a real-world sharing menu, faster application startup, and more.
This first version only works with Google's Pixel devices, including Pixel 1, which technically exceeds its support window. Broader compatibility for some non-Google devices is expected with the second version.
We will publish a deeper dive in Android Q once we have it installed and we will have time to re-read some of the documents, but for the moment, here is a brief overview of the excerpts from Google's blog post on the subject.
Best Foldable and Split Screen Support
Collapsible documents will become a big problem in the future of Android, and Android Q brings support for basic operating systems for this brand new form factor. Foldable smartphones have flexible screens that can be physically folded by the user. You thus get a device the size of a phone that opens in a tablet. For a design like the Galaxy Fold, this means that there is a small front screen and a second, larger inside screen. For a design like the Huawei Mate X, which sports a wraparound display, the phone's unique display panel goes from a segmented display "front" and "back" in phone mode to a large format display in Tablet.
For these and all other folding, changing and reconfigurable devices, Android Q has been equipped to preserve the state of your application when you move between screens or open an existing screen. On the Galaxy Fold, Android Q will let you open Google Maps on the small front screen. When you open it, your Google Maps session will switch to the big screen. On a single-screen device such as Mate X, opening the device will make your session transparent in tablet mode. Google and Samsung have already revealed the success of this feature when launching the Samsung Galaxy Fold. During this presentation, the feature was called "continuity of the screen".
Looks like the split screen has also been reworked. The previous shared-screen implementation, which debuted in Android 7.0 Nougat, gave the illusion of two applications running at the same time, but in reality only one application was active. Developers could use some tricks to keep updating their user interface while they were not the active app, but an unsupported app would eventually display an outdated user interface without special tweaks for developers. A new feature called "Multi-resume" could solve this problem. We will have to investigate.
Privacy and permissions
As mentioned earlier in the leaks, Android Q has enhanced privacy controls and permissions. The "Allow" or "Deny" pop-up window now offers three options, and the blog article states that "Android Q allows users to allow apps to never see their location, only when the user's browser is running." application is in use, or all the time (in the background). "New permissions will control application access to photos, videos, and audio collections. Access to files was previously a matter of all or nothing.
Android Q will prevent applications from starting an activity in the background, which means applications will no longer be able to take control of the screen without user intervention. This feature was used in the past for incoming call screens and alarm applications (and malicious applications, I'm sure), but now applications will be limited to the same. displaying a notification.
The new sharing menu
The sharing menu in Android has been horrible for some versions now. When you open the share list, the feature to start at Query each application on your phone to fill the list while it was already open. It was slow, and the list skyrocketed and added new icons as you watched it. Sometimes you had to wait for the application you wanted to pop up; Sometimes you had to press something and the icon jump. The craziest thing? None of this information has been recorded. Whenever you open the sharing menu, it performs a live rebuild of the sharing menu and re-polls your entire collection of apps.
The new sharing menu has a more reasonable implementation. Developers can publish "share shortcuts", which seems to be a blueprint for creating share menu information in advance rather than during the use of the interface. It is important to note that the blog article states that since sharing shortcuts are published in advance, "the sharing UI can be loaded instantly at launch." However, we do not know how it works with older applications. Is not it instantaneous that developers use the new user interface? It is difficult to universally adopt a new user interface for developers. We will have to investigate during our work with the system.
A bunch of other features
ART, Android Runtime, is receiving even more optimizations and should launch applications even faster. Vulkan 1.1, the low-level graphical API, is now mandatory for devices running Android Q or higher. Applications can display a "Control Panel" when they need to enable location services instead of just transferring you to the full setup application. New rules for developers – forcing Google Play apps to upgrade at least the level of the Android 9 Pie API and an additional limitation of non-public APIs by developers – will take effect with the final launch Android Q.
There are a host of other Android Q features in which we will come back later in a practical report. If you want to follow at home and have a Pixel device, you can sign up for the beta version at Android.com/beta. For the moment, we have some facilities to do!
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