Android Oreo 8.0 Best Features: 5 things to Know

What is Android Oreo?

The latest version of Android that’s smarter, faster, and more powerful. Android Oreo gives you many new ways to extend your app and develop more efficiently.

Some of the features includes

1. Picture-in-picture  
2. Notification dots 
3. Adaptive icons 
4. Shortcut pinning 
5. Multidisplay support

1. Picture-in-picture  

   
   Android 8.0 (API level 26) allows activities to launch in picture-in-picture (PIP) mode. PIP is a special type of multi-window mode mostly used for video playback. PIP mode is already available for Android TV; Android 8.0 makes the feature available on other Android devices.
   
   

2. Notification dots  

   
   A notification is a message you display to the user outside of your app's normal UI. When you tell the system to issue a notification, it first appears as an icon in the notification area. To see the details of the notification, the user opens the notification drawer. Both the notification area and the notification drawer are system-controlled areas that the user can view at any time.
   
   
   Figure 1. Notifications in the notification area.
   
   
   Figure 2. Notifications in the notification drawer.
   
   In supported launchers and on devices running Android 8.0 (API level 26) and higher:
   
3. Apps can also display notification badges on app icons.
4. Users can also long-press on an app icon to glance at the notifications associated with a notification badge.

Figure 3. Notification badges display on icons and folders.

Figure 4. Users can long-press on an app icon to glance at notifications Notification channels  

3. Adaptive icons 

 Android 8.0 (API level 26) introduces adaptive launcher icons, which can display a variety of shapes across different device models. For example, an adaptive launcher icon can display a circular shape on one OEM device, and display a squircle on another device. Each device OEM provides a mask, which the system then uses to render all adaptive icons with the same shape. Adaptive launcher icons are also used in shortcuts, the Settings app, sharing dialogs, and the overview screen.

Figure 1. Adaptive icons support a variety of masks which vary from one device to another.

You can control the look of your adaptive launcher icon by defining 2 layers, consisting of a background and a foreground. You must provide icon layers as drawables without masks or background shadows around the outline of the icon.

Figure 2. Adaptive icons are defined using 2 layers and a mask.

In Android 7.1 (API level 25) and earlier, launcher icons were sized at 48 x 48 dp. You must now size your icon layers using the following guidelines:

• Both layers must be sized at 108 x 108 dp.
• The inner 72 x 72 dp of the icon appears within the masked viewport.
• The system reserves the outer 18 dp on each of the 4 sides to create interesting visual effects, such as parallax or pulsing.

Note: Animated visual effects are generated by supported launchers. Visual effects may vary from one launcher to another.

Caution: A device OEM can specify a mask that may include a radius that is as short as 33 dp along certain points of the shape.

Figure 3. Adaptive icons support a variety of visual effects. 

4. Shortcut pinning 

 Static shortcuts should provide links to generic actions within your app, and these actions should remain consistent over the lifetime of your app's current version. Good candidates for static shortcuts include viewing sent messages, setting an alarm, and displaying a user's exercise activity for the day.

 

Figure 1. Using app shortcuts, you can surface key actions and take users deep into your app instantly

5. Multidisplay support

 Beginning with Android 8.0 (API level 26), the platform offers enhanced support for multiple displays. If an activity supports multi-window mode and is running on a device with multiple displays, users can move the activity from one display to another. When an app launches an activity, the app can specify which display the activity should run on.