Android M Preview: 6 Areas of Improvement Showcased
During the recently concluded Google I/O 2015, the company unveiled a lot of new things happening to Google and its products in the coming months. This included a preview into the upcoming iteration of the company's mobile operating system, Android. Currently called Android M, it features six areas of improvement on previous versions of the OS, the latest being Android Lollipop.
According to a report in Tech Times, the six areas of improvement are app permissions, Web experience, app links, Android Pay, fingerprint support and power consumption.
App permissions have always been a sticking point for most users. More and more smartphone users now are wary of sharing their personal data to unknown companies. Android M will have a feature that will "request permissions on a permission-by-permission basis," for areas such as location, camera, microphone, contacts, phone, SMS, calendar and sensors. Also, the new OS will not request permission "until the first time an app needs to use that permission." Users will also have the option to change permissions later on by changing the app's settings.
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In terms of Web experience, the new OS will include Chrome Custom Tabs which will "overlap a Chrome tab over an app when a user clicks on a link" from within the app. The tab will look like "the style of the app," and from the tab, users can easily go back to the app.
Accessing app links will also be different in Android M. Instead of the user being asked what app to use when they click on a link, Android M will reportedly decide for the user what is the best app to use. No more bothersome decisions to make about choosing one app over the other. The example cited in the report is when a user clicks on a Twitter link in an email, which with Android M, "will make a request to the server of Twitter, to identify that the Twitter app is indeed in the best place to take the user."
Android Pay is the other big thing with Android Pay. Developed to rival Apple Pay, it also uses a token system to "never reveal the user's card information." Right now, it is set to work with any phone that supports NFC and can be used in 700,000 stores around the U.S. Mobile carriers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are already "on board with the new system."
To beef up security for Android Pay, Android M will also have built-in fingerprint support, which will allow users to scan their fingerprints directly on the touch screen of their devices. These fingerprints can be used to unlock their phones or pay for purchases with Android Pay and other tasks that require security.
The final area of improvement is in power consumption. Android M will have a new feature called Doze, which makes devices go on a sleep mode when the device is not being used for a long period of time. High-priority notifications will still come out in sleep mode, but otherwise, this new feature will save a lot of battery power. An add-on to this feature is being able to charge other Android devices using USB Type-C ports.
No official release date has been announced, but Google says that it will be out within the third quarter of this year. A developer preview is available on the Nexus 5, 6, 9 and Player.
