Google releases Android 8.0 Oreo with new developer tweaks

Google has released Android 8.0 Oreo as the next iteration of its open source mobile platform. The latest update has a list of tweaks for developers to let them build an enhanced user experience.

“In Android 8.0 Oreo, we focused on creating fluid experiences that make Android even more powerful and easy to use,” said Android’s VP of engineering, Dave Burke in a blog post.

Android 8.0 is a result of months of testing by developers and early adopters who installed and tested its preview build on their devices. Also, it is designed to make the Android ecosystem more competitive with Apple’s iOS.

Android 8.0 Oreo comes with the picture-in-picture mode that enables developers to provide an advanced multi-tasking experience on their apps. The feature was originally available on Android TV but is now on mobile devices, enabling users to simultaneously run two apps on the screen. Google has added a new object to enable the picturein-picture mode. The object, called PictureInPictureParams, specifies properties such as the active app’s preferred aspect ratio.

Android Oreo features other consistent notifications too. There are changes such as notification channels, dots and timeout. You just need to use a specific method to make notifications through your apps better on Android 8.0. Google has also added features such as downloadable fonts, and adaptive icons to upgrade the interface of existing apps. Likewise, the platform has WebView APIs and support for

Java 8 language features. There are also the ICU4J Android Framework APIs that reduce the APK footprint of thirdparty apps by not compiling the ICU4J libraries in the app package.