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You can download the Android O beta right now

By James Lu - on 21 May 2017, 11:02am

You can download the Android O beta right now

Google has just announced the latest version of Android OS at its annual I/O developer conference and you can download the beta version right now. Android O doesn't have many flashy new features, but Google is promising a faster and easier to use user experience.

With Android O, Google is adding something called Fluid Experiences. This covers a number of small tools and features all designed to make you more productive and assist with your daily tasks. For example, autofilling text will be smarter and more intuitive and there's a new picture-in-picture mode that lets you view videos and take notes at the same time. Notification dots for apps, which are already available on many custom launchers, will now be built into Android O by default too. Android O users will see a dot over the top of any app with an active notification. If you long-press that app, you'll get a list of shortlink actions you can perform, which will viewing the notification itself in a tiny pop-up window. Here's GIF from Google that relays picture-in-picture mode  and dot notification functions:-

Android O also adds smart copy/paste text selection. You'll still be able to copy/paste by tapping on a word or number, but Android O will also recognize the content you're copying, so for example, if you highlight a phone number, you can just tap it to dial. If you highlight an address, a single tap will start up maps navigation. Highlighting itself should also be more intelligent now, and Android O will recognize when you want to select entire blocks of text, such as addresses for example.

Smart Text Selection at work.

Android O will also be getting TensorFlow Lite, a new scaled-down version of Google’s machine learning tool, TensorFlow.  TensorFlow Lite will let any smartphone, even low-powered devices utilize machine learning AI.

As with the last few releases of Android, Google has yet to confirm an official name for Android O. Oreo perhaps?

Source: Google

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