Hey, what is up? I’m here and welcome to a new version of Android. This is Android P. It’s one of those incremental updates. Again new versions aren’t those like massive drastic changes anymore like they used to be back in the day. But that makes sense when they’ve been refining Android for so long, they’re kind of tweaking things at this point. But that’s never stopped us and we have the Developer Preview on this pixel too and it’s worth noting that there are some actually pretty cool new things.So, these are the five biggest new feature changes to Android P:
Android P Feature Number One – New Visuals
The new visuals and there’s just a couple smaller things. It’s just a general look and feel of a few tweaks you might not even notice them if I didn’t point them out. First of all the clock is over to the left corner now it used to be on the right and still it changes color. If you have a dark wallpaper it’ll be a light clock, if you have a light wallpaper it’ll be dark and that’s also along with all the buttons on the bottom. The date, and the weather, the app drawer also now has this more defined dock instead of a gradient shade behind it so it’s more obvious. I think that may affect the way people make their wallpaper choice. Again it’s obviously pretty minor you might not notice.The biggest thing is these quick settings up at the top, everything is first of all in these circles now. It’s this blue and white look and really what you’re gonna notice. This is definitely part of a larger theme here. If you pay attention you’re gonna start to notice a lot of rounded corners and smoothed off edges in Android P.
Android P Feature Number Two – Those quick settings
This is one of those things in Android that they always seem to tweak and like every new version they can’t really make up their mind on how they want it to look. So they’ve changed it again here. They have like I said these circles for everything and the new blue and white look that’s also new with the color.Now if you have enough quick settings it’s this vertically scrolling list now instead of a left-to-right paginate at UI. It has this big obvious bar at the bottom so it’s generally a little bit cleaner and more obvious where things are at. What I don’t like though is you can’t long press to expand these toggles anymore and I get that quick setting are supposed to be quick. It’s just a one press toggle but that was really useful if you had a bunch of Wi-Fi networks. once you long pressed you could get in and explore them or a bunch of Bluetooth devices. That’s gone for some reason here I don’t like that.
Android P Feature Number Three – The New Volume Controls
This is definitely my favorite change so far. First of all pressing, the volume buttons adjust the media volume by default, so that’s pretty sweet and you can see here it’s in this bar over at the side now. It’s out of the way instead of that huge thing across the top. It goes up and down instead of left to right, so now it matches the volume button on the phone. Which is cool I think.Could probably be a little bit smaller, just this whole bar UI is pretty big for just the volume. Overall I like it is over here now and then there’s this button at the bottom to switch between ringer modes so vibrate or silent or volume on. Then that arrow at the top is to view your connected devices so if you have some Bluetooth speakers or if it’s connected to your wireless headphones or your car Bluetooth or something they’ll all show up here. So, I’m I’m a fan of this layout.
Android P Feature Number Four – New Settings app
This is one of those things that seems to change in every new version of Android but they’ve changed it again here so with Android P they got some color in there. all the icons are big round colorful circles on the side, but it’s not too cartoonish.I mean every icon is a different color but then you get into the actual settings menus and they look the same as they were before. So, it’s pretty clean and then up top again you’ll notice the Settings search bar is this super huge rounded. I don’t know, it seems like they’ve rounded every single corner possible. Mixed feelings about this generally. I think it could look cleaner with rectangles. But hey that’s the way we’re gone.
Android P Feature Number Five – Theme Support
last but certainly not least is not support in the developer preview it’s a little more of an indication of our future than it is a feature. So if you go into settings and display and themes there is actually a couple different themes that simulate a notched at the top of the phone.So this is so developers can see what their app would look like on a phone that actually has a notch so they can see what the behavior looks like and make sure everything still works. It’s laid out properly so there’s a small narrow notch at the top like the essential phone might have or a medium one or even the big unibrow one like the iPhone 10 has. Obviously, it’s weird to have a virtual notch cut out on the top of a phone that already has bezel “x”.Again this is a developer preview and this is a tool for developers, to make their apps to support the phones that we know are coming that have notches in them. Remember there are already some Android phones coming out including the ones that already exist with a notch in the top. Does this embrace the notch mean pixel too will have a notch? No, but it also doesn’t mean pixel won’t have enough. I don’t know that’s just kind of where we’re at right now. welcome to 2018!