With Android Oreo been the most up to date version of Android for nearly a year, it is that time for an update to the Android operating system – welcome Android P.

It is currently called Android P due to the fact that the candy or sweet confectionery has not been officially released, yet. Likely contenders for this include Pancake, Popsicle and Pastille.

Although Android P does not come with any new major updates, there are a lot of incremental innovative updates which will come as a welcome to all Android users. With this, here are the top 5 Android P new features.

 

 

Settings App

Although it seems that the settings app changes with, pretty much, every iteration of Android that is released, there are some nice touches to the new settings app for Android P:

• All of the icons are big, round and colorful circles.
• There is a search bar to manually search for any setting at the top of the settings app, which is cleaner in how it looks.

 

 

User Interface

Google has updated some areas of the user interface to make it have a new look, whilst in some other areas by making it cleaner looking. Examples include:

• Moving the clock from the right hand side of the top menu to the left.
• The quick settings, when sliding down, are blue and rounded.

 

 

Volume Controls

When changing the volume, many people complained of the bar at the top of their smartphone appearing, usually disrupting whatever app they were in. This has been fixed by having a volume pop-up appear next to the volume buttons, helping users to understand easily as well as which button refers to volume up and down.

 

 

Quick Settings

As already mentioned, the visual look to the quick settings has changed with the icons being rounded and blue. Instead of swiping to the left when you have too many settings, it is a infinite vertical scroll down to see the remaining settings in quick settings. This helps to make it cleaner and easy to access all of the settings too.

 

 

Notch Support

Although this is not really a feature for the public, it is definitely something very useful for developers to use.

Notch support is a way for developers to see how their apps look on smartphones with a notch, which can be customized as to how large or small the notch is. This gives a very good indication that some 2018 Android smartphones may increase the screen size through having a notch, similar to the iPhone X.

 

As made clear, there are no sudden changes or big news surrounding Android P – it seems a very nice cleaner iterative step over from Android Oreo, for which was already a very good mobile system software.