Android L Announced – In-Depth Look
Whilst you most probably don’t even have Android 4.4 Kit Kat on your smartphone yet, Google still went ahead and announced the new smartphone OS, Android L, along with the release of the developer’s preview at Google I/O. The new Android L operating system seems to have had quite a major face-lift with the removal of transparency from a lot of elements within the OS as well as the implementation of Google’s new design philosophy aiming to make the user’s experience allot easier and fulfilling.
The new design philosophy is based around the concept that whenever a notification or alert pops up on screen, it always comes from somewhere, for example if you get a text message alert, it will float over from the location of the phone app instead of just appearing out of nowhere. I personally think that this is a fantastic idea if Google and other app developers can pull it off across the board and create a consistent feel to the interface.
This new version of Android is being refereed to as ‘L’ as we know that the naming scheme for Android goes in alphabetical order, many are suggesting the new OS will be called ‘lollipop’ or ‘lemon’ but it is uncertain at this time.
Some other new features apart from the face-lift include the new, completely re-designed notifications pane. You can now interact with a number of your notifications right from the lock screen as well as having the ability to swipe the lock screen in different directions to take you to a specific page of your choice. Also, the notifications are no longer simply ordered chronologically. Instead, they are now ordered by relevance and importance which is very handy. For the most important notifications, Google has implemented heads-up notifications which will appear over whatever app you are in, which you can then dismiss or interact with. Some of these most important notifications include incoming calls which no longer take up the entire screen which is a very nice improvement over previous generations of Android.
The announcement of many Android smart watches was also present at Google I/O as well as the very interesting concept of Trusted Environments. With Trusted Environments, if your phone is within a foot of your Android smart watch then you can access your phone without the need to input any passwords or pattern codes which a very cool concept in my opinion!
Finally, there is ART. ART is a software library which is designed to make your apps work significantly quicker and boot much faster. ART is also meant to increase battery life by making operation of the phone more efficient as Android will be using less power decompressing the apps. There is also a new battery saver mode which should extend the phone’s battery life by up to 90 minutes!
In conclusion, I think we can all see where Google is going with the whole Android everywhere thing with it being implemented into wearables, phones, TVs, cars and much, much more however, I do not think this is a bad thing at all if it works!
As usual, feel free to share your thoughts on Android L down below. What do you think of the new OS from Google?