Google I/O: Android N Comes With Improved Doze Mode And 72 New Emojis Including Avocado, Selfie

Google took the wraps off the much-anticipated “Android N” yesterday at the annual I/O conference. Even though, the Marshmallow successor comes packed with many impressive features and improvements, support for enhanced Doze Mode and new Unicode 9 standard stands out.

In general, many smartphones struggle to retain battery charge for a longtime even with big battery units. Some OEMs tweak the software to get reasonable battery life even with modest battery units. Therefore, battery is one of the make or break factors for anyone planning to buy a handset.

Google knows this better as it introduced the battery saving mechanism “Doze Mode” in Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS last year, rather than relying on OEMs’ battery units. Doze Mode puts the Android device to deep sleep when not in use for a prolonged period of time by cutting down the background activities like apps and services. However, this aspect works only when the phone is inactive.

According to Android Developers, with Android N, the search giant has improved the battery-saver mode further and hence, handsets running this OS will be able to offer much better stand-by battery life. This is apparently achieved by featuring an “extended variant of Doze.”

The Android N’s Doze Mode will apparently get enabled soon after the display goes off. To be specific, it doesn’t wait for the handset to be completely inactive for a stipulated period of time, unlike Marshmallow’s Doze Mode. Even though, it’ll start limiting the access, crucial apps and services like network access, background activities, among others, will reportedly run in “brief time windows every few minutes,” Phone Arena reported.

However, when the device becomes inactive, the Doze Mode will be much effective by cutting down many background tasks.

Meanwhile, Google’s Android N is reportedly the first mobile OS to support the brand new Unicode 9 standard, Phone Arena reported. This enables the OS to offer 72 new emojis. As it turns out, a good majority of the 72 emojis are humanoids with a slew of skin tones to choose from. Google introduced some of the emojis during the I/O event and here are the samples: juggling artists, facepalm, avocado and selfies.