New on Google’s Nougat
Peel the wrapper, and a smarter operating system emerges for Android smartphones.
GOOGLE chose what is essentially a sweet made from sugar or honey, roasted nuts, and egg white, as the name for the latest Android operating system. Yes, the final wrapper has been taken off Android Nougat ( the moree tech savvy people would probably refer to o this as Android 7.0), and the tasty new sof ftware is now rolling out.
This is the poin nt where owners of the Nexus 6 ( made b y Motorola), Nexus 5X ( made by LG) andd the Nexus 6P ( made by Huawei) smartph hones can rejoice, because they will now be getting the notification to download the ne ew Android update anytime over the e next few days, if not already.
As it emerges, the latest Android operatin ng system is a mix of completel ly new stuff, a bit more polish t o existing features and und der- the- hood improvements to o enhance performance and batte ry life. We have had the chance to use e Android Nougat on the Nexus 6P dev vice, and this is how the experience has p panned out so far.
Android Nouga at now has added the ability to send a reply to o a new message notification. This means t that if you see a message on the lock screenn of the phone, or a pop- up at the top of the s screen while you are using some ot ther app, you can simply tap on n it, type in your reply andd send.
It negates the needn to switch from the a app you were using att the time to go to the other app to draft a reply. It will be up to the app developers to o make full use of thist feature, but out ofo the box, apps suc h as Gmail Hangouts alreadya support instant re eplies.
Secondly, you g get easier controls for individual apps in Android Nougat. When a notification pops up on the phone, just press and hold it to toggle the settings. It is rather convenient to be able to silence future alerts from an app in the notification itself. One feature that has remained constant in Android over the years is the slide down access to certain quick settings. Now, when you slide down from the notification bar on the top of the screen, you get a different layer of quick settings, and swiping again opens a larger set of options, same as earlier. We feel this is rather neat. Google has focused on the battery life improvement, and Doze mode which was also a part of the Android Marshmallow operating system, has now been upgraded. First, whenever the phone’s screen is off, Doze cuts off all unnecessary background processes for apps which are not optimised to work with Doze – worry not, you will not miss a Whatsapp message from a friend. With Android Nougat, Google has also tweaked the way the OS uses the memory, which will improve performance on devices that aren’t very powerful.
Android NougatN has been developed with big scre een phones in mind, and that is clear from th he fact that Google has added feature es such as multi- window and twea aked the quick settings, all of whic ch become even more usable.
Ov verall, everything in Nougat seems more polished compared to Marshmallo ow, which itself never felt like a rough mang ger anyway. While the potential improvemen nts in battery life will only be understood in the long run, we are quite liking the tw weaks done to Android to make everything morem useable. – The Mint/ Tribune New ws Service