Android 10 Has Arrived

Android 10 Has Arrived

Over a year in the making, Android 10 is finally here. Android is no longer using the dessert naming convention. Instead, because of global considerations, Android is now Android 10. Android 10 major advancements are threefold: Mobile innovation, privacy and security and digital wellbeing. Android 10 will be released to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and a worldwide rollout to all three generations of Pixel devices. An update at the end of the year will be available to participating partners.

Android 10 extends hardware and software innovations including multi-window support for foldable technology:

“Android 10 extends multitasking across app windows and provides screen continuity to maintain your app state as the device folds or unfolds.”

Android 10 includes 5G platform support and expands existing APIs. The 5G APIs can be used to detect high bandwidth and check for metered connections.

Accessibility is addressed through Android 10’s Live Caption, “automatically captions media playing on users’ devices, from videos to podcasts and audio messages, across any app.” With a single tap, Live Caption makes your apps and games more accessible.

Android 10 introduces smart reply in notifications for smart replies for messages or opening maps for an address in the notification. Privacy is maintained by keeping the machine language processing entirely on the device.

Android 10 offers a system-wide dark theme for low light and battery saving capabilities. A dark theme can be built from scratch or from a preexisting theme.

Gesture navigation is another unique feature addition to Android 10. The navigation bar is removed allowing for the app, to use the full screen “to deliver richer, more immersive experiences.”

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With the ongoing debacles concerning privacy issues and technology, Android 10 has made privacy paramount. The major advanced privacy features include giving users more control over location data, protecting location data in network scans, preventing device tracking, securing user data in external storage and Blocking unwanted interruptions.

Since security issues have also plagued technology in significant ways, the developers for Android have increased Android 10’s security features. The salient points include storage encryption, TLS 1.3 by default and platform hardening.

Don’t forget the camera- and other media features. Android 10 includes dynamic depth for photos, audio playback capture, new audio and video codecs, native MIDI API and Vulkan everywhere.

Android 10 also addresses internet and wifi connectivity with improved peer-to-peer and internet connectivity:

“We’ve refactored the Wi-Fi stack to improve privacy and performance, and also to improve common use-cases like managing IoT devices and suggesting internet connections — without requiring the location permission.”

Apps can now use adaptive Wi-Fi by enabling high performance and low latency modes.

Android 10 Android foundations include ART enhancements for apps to start faster, consume less memory and run smoother. Neural Networks API 1.2 expands machine learning capabilities fro your app and includes 60 new functions “including ARGMAX, ARGMIN, quantized LSTM, alongside a range of performance optimizations.”