Google has announced the first developer preview of its upcoming operating system Android P. The release of Android P is just a baseline build for developers. The company says it will have a lot more features to announce at its developer conference Google I/O in May.
The preview features indoor positioning with Wi-Fi RTT, display cutout support, improved messaging notifications, a multi-camera API, ImageDecoder for bitmaps and drawables, media APIs, autofill improvements, neural networks API 1.1, and new mobile payments APIs. The new indoor positioning is designed to provide location-based service solutions while the display cutout support allows apps to take advantage of fullscreen content.
In addition, Android P is focused on strengthening security, privacy and performance. For security, Google plans a consistent UI for fingerprint authentication across apps and devices. Android P will also restrict access to mic, camera and all SensorManager sensors from idle apps for privacy. The company also plans enhancements to the ART runtime for performance and efficiency.
The operating system also continues support for the Kotlin programming language by JetBrains. Android P will include improved compiler optimizations and better support for Kotlin’s generated code.
Other features include power efficiency, and improved app compatibility.
Google recently announced it will be committed to get more devices on modern Android operating systems. By November 2018, Google will require app updates to target Android Oreo or higher.
The preview also includes an updated SDK with system images for testing on the Android Emulator, Pixel, Pixel XL Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL devices.
