Android M has Arrived – The Top-Most 12 Features that you all will Love!
Google unveiled the new version of the Android OS dubbed as Android M at its annual I/O 2015 conference held at San Francisco last week. A developer preview has been released, which gives us insights to some of the new features and improvements. The new OS focuses on improving the core experience of the Android. It has brought the much-needed stability and usability improvements in the OS. Here’s a quick features rundown!
- There has been a change in the way app permissions are handled. Selective app permission has been introduced, which will allow users to pick and choose the permissions an app will have during installation. Users will even be able to manage the app permissions in settings.
- Google has introduced “Chrome Custom Tabs”, which will give an enhanced web experience on Android platform. It will allow apps to open a customized Chrome window on top of the active app without any requirement of launching the Chrome app separately, thus providing a more intuitive user-experience when navigating between apps and the web. This tab will also allow users to take the benefit of Chrome’s power and security along with the saved passwords.
- Google has integrated the fingerprint scanning API in the Android due to the increased demand of fingerprint scanner feature. This will allow users to confirm the payment with their fingerprints. This feature will also help users to unlock their phones without any password or PIN and even purchase apps in Play Store.
- Google has introduced a new mobile payments system called as Android Pay, specifically designed to make payments using Android Smartphone’s in stores using NFC (Near Field Communication). It creates a virtual number for each payment thus protecting users’ confidential information.
- Heads-up notifications were introduced in Android Lollipop; but many users didn’t prefer having notifications pop up for every app. Android M will give you the facility to disable heads up notifications for the apps of your choice.
- Earlier when a web-link was selected in Android, it would give you options of opening the link say in YouTube or Chrome or others. With Android M, this limitation has been removed. It will directly open the link in the required app without stopping users with a dialog box every time.
- Google has introduced a new feature called ‘Now on Tap’ for Google Now. By long pressing home button on any screen, contextual information will pop-up on what’s there on the screen. If you will be discussing about a book on chat with a friend, pressing the home button will present you all the information relevant to that specific book. You can activate Google Now while watching a YouTube video of some well-know actor, which will provide you more information on the video or the actor.
- Android M uses a new functionality known as Doze, which will improve the standby time of the Smartphone’s. The new feature will track your device’s interaction through motion detection. If your device wouldn’t have been used for some time, Doze will limit the background activity of apps, thus conserving battery life. Battery saver will be turned off automatically when your Smartphone’s will be put on charge. As per Google, the battery life of the device will be doubled through this feature.
- Google has introduced RAM manger with Android M, which will inform users about the average as well as maximum RAM usage of an app. Users will come to know which app is consuming more of RAM, thus helping them get rid of those apps to increase the performance as well as the battery life of the device.
- With Android M, Google Maps will support offline search and navigation. This will be helpful to the users in searching for their destination at a place where there are network issues.
- Android M has come out with a new app drawer that will scroll vertical instead of horizontal. The app drawer will enable users in finding the apps in a better and easier way as there is one more search function placed towards the upper right corner.
- Google will now allow users to use SD Card or USB drive, format them and enable them to work like internal storage space with Android M. This will be helpful to users in moving their data within the internal storage of devices and also on the external storage source. Google has also provided encryption to the external storage devices for security purposes. Android M will also allow installing apps on external storage devices.
