Android O: 5 Features Of The Upcoming Android OS Update, Expected To Be Showcased At Google I/O 2017

Google is expected to launch a new Android update in 2017, following the company’s tradition of annual operating system updates. The update is likely to be named Android O and is likely to be called Android Oreo, following another of the company’s traditions of naming Android updates alphabetically using the names of desserts. The numerical denomination assigned to the update will be 8, so it could officially be called Android 8 – O OS.

The update could be launched at the upcoming Google I/O, which has been confirmed to take place from May 17-19.

Venture Beat reported Tuesday, Google might be working on some assistive features for the next Android update. The report further says that the company is expected to release Android O to eligible phones by fall 2017. It lists three new features:

Copy Less: This feature is designed to help people copy and paste text from one app to another. Although the report does not make it clear whether the feature will be a part of Google’s virtual keyboard, the Gboard or Android itself, it cites an example to make it clearer:

“If you and a friend are having a conversation in a chat about where to eat dinner and you find a good restaurant in the Yelp app, when you go back to your conversation and type “it’s at,” one automatically generated suggestion in Gboard would be the restaurant’s address. You can just tap it, and the keyboard will populate the text box with the address, which you can send with the send button — instead of using Android’s pointers for copying just the right amount of text in Yelp and then pasting in the messaging app.”

Basically, Google will suggest auto complete suggestions for your chats, but with relevant data from its retinue of apps.

Maps embedded inside apps: Currently, if you send out a message containing an address, you have to either physically type it out or copy it from somewhere. With the next Android update, Android will recognize that the text represents an address and if you double tap on the address, it will straight off open it up in Google Maps. Whether the feature was restricted to Google’s stock Android messaging apps or available to third-party apps such as Messenger, Venture Beat stated that its source was not sure.

More gestures integration: The upcoming update will bring finger gestures to all phones having the update. For instance, making a C gesture on your smartphone’s display will bring up a list of your recent contacts.

While these are the features listed in the report, some more features are expected to roll out with the update. These include:

Better desktop connectivity: Companies such as Samsung and Apple are already expected to endow their 2017 devices with desktop connectivity options. However, it seems Google could actually make desktop connectivity i.e. the ability to pick up where you left at in any app on your phone and pick up at the same point in your PC.

For example, you could scribble something on a Google Doc on your phone and then pickup at the same point on your PC, without even needing to save that document.

Better hardware management: With the Android O update, the OS is expected to get smarter and provide better performance by utilizing RAM better. Google is expected to root out outdated processes, which have existed since Android 5.0 and provide users with a much more optimized OS.