The Android 12 Developer Preview 1 is finally out. Google has launched it publicly, providing us access to the first development of the OS. Using this first development, now users can install it on compatible gadgets. This blog gives you a glimpse of the confirmed features of the Android 12 Developer Preview.
Google is enhancing and launching many facets in its most recent Android iteration. Changes to notification support and media handling, more polished notifications UI and enhancements to haptic feedback and privacy all hit the mark. For a detailed understanding of confirmed Android 12 Developer Preview features, keep reading!
Major Confirmed Features of Android 12
1. AVIF Image Support
Android 12 launches AVIF image support. This image format promises a more enhanced quality of images than JPEG with no penalty of larger sizes file. This format uses the open-source video codec AV1.
2. Lock Screen
With Android 12, the lock screen has a translucent background layer. Moreover, the animation for the pattern unlocks seems a little lively as well.
3. Simpler Wi-Fi Sharing
You can ignore the barcode scanning in Android 12. Simply click the ‘Nearby’ button under the QR code. This will utilize the Nearby Share feature of Android for transferring the Wi-Fi details to anybody you want.
Alongside scanning the QR code, this feature lets you share the connection details with many people without requiring your phone to scan for everybody.
4. Easy Accessibility Settings
In Android 12, the accessibility settings menu also gets an improvement. Although the major options are simply available on the main page, other less usually utilized options like color correction, display size, and font size are presently classified under categories like Display and Text.
5. Plentiful Content Insertion
To make content insertion easier, Google has launched a new unified API that allows you to accept content from every source like drag and drop, keyboard, or clipboard.
Whenever you insert content through any system, you can attach a new interface, OnReceiveContentListener, to UI elements and receive a callback. This callback becomes the only place for the code to deal with all content insertion, from styled and plain text to images, markup, audio files, videos, and so forth.
6. Haptic-Paired Audio Effects
In Android 12, Google is enabling developers to couple haptic feedback patterns with audio. The duration and strength of vibrations are borrowed from audio cues that add a more engaging layer to alerts or media playback.
7. Multi-Channel Audio
Android 12 comes with many improvements for audio with structural data. It includes assistance for MPEG-H playback in offload and pass-through mode, and the resamplers, audio mixers, and effects are optimized for almost 24 channels.
8. Improved Cookie Management
Android 12 is adding support for SameSite cookie behaviors to WebView. The SameSite feature enables developers to announce in case a cookie must be restricted to a particular site. This inclusion must enhance the cookie management of Android 12 across different applications and OS. The top Android browsers already support this feature.
9. Enhanced Widgets
Android Widgets are almost the same. Since Apple launched dynamic widgets with iOS 12 last year, Google is trying to do the same with Android 12. The company has added what appears to be a widget stack where users can scroll right or left on the same widgets.
For now, this attribute is hidden but must be accessible soon. Moreover, the Conversation widget from Android 12 is maybe under development.
10. Notification Enhancements
The notification system of Android 12 will be redesigned for enhancing usability, aesthetics, and functionality. Google is changing the controls and drawer and remodeling animations and transitions. It has also targeted responsiveness. Android 12 will enable developers to get rid of trampolines, middle-man broadcast services, or receivers.
Trampolines bounce users from the notification to the application. Google wants notification buttons to take users straight to the application itself in Android 12. Moreover, the organization is delaying some foreground service notifications’ display by up to 10 seconds. This will provide short tasks a comprehensive window for completing before knocking the user.
11. PiP (Picture-in-Picture) Enhancements
Although this feature has been accessible since Android Oreo, it has been quite restricted in terms of utility. Google ultimately added the capacity of resizing the PiP window with Android 11 by holding and dragging a right corner; however, the experience has still not been very smooth.
This has been solved with Android 12 as it receives new pinch-to-zoom functionality for PiP.
12. Android Updates through Google Play
Google will be investing more in Google Play system updates (project mainline) for offering applications a more secure, stable environment across gadgets.
In Android 12, it has added the ART (Android Runtime) module that allows it to push updates to the basic runtime and libraries on gadgets that run Android 12.
Google can boost runtime functionality and correctness, handle the memory more effectively and make Kotlin functions quicker – all with no need for a complete system update.
Moreover, it has maximized the current modules’ functions – for instance, Google is offering its compatible media transcoding feature within an updatable module.
13. More Options to Mark-Up Screenshots
In case you capture a screenshot with a Pixel device, you can simply markup that shot using paintbrush-like tools.
However, you can add emojis, text, and stickers to your screenshots utilizing the same tool with Android 12. This is not a great transformation, but it might hinder people from using a third-party app for doing the same thing.
14. Redirect Vibration to Gaming Controllers
On Android 12, we were expecting to see a native Game Mode but that is not present till now. Nevertheless, Android 12 provides the capacity of redirecting haptic feedback data from the smart device to a gaming controller or a gamepad if you are utilizing one.
While this seems to a try to facilitate Stadia on Android, you also need to be capable of using the functionality with third-party gaming controllers that boast a vibration motor.
15. Permissions Dialog
In Android Q, Google launched the more signifying permission handling feature. That is really helpful in case you want to stay alert regarding how applications utilize your mobile’s sensors as well as other accesses.
Presently, with Android 12, the permissions dialog box that displays has been a little changed. For some applications that require accessing the location or microphone, you currently receive a shortcut for always allowing access in settings.
16. Hidden Selfie Camera on Pixel 5
Android Police discovered that Google is presently offering Pixel 5 users the choice of hiding the punch hole in Android 12. When this setting is turned on in the Developer menu, a black bar can hide the selfie camera. Significantly, this bar also showcases the status bar.
17. Optimization of Foreground Services
Foreground services are a great way for applications to handle some kinds of user-facing jobs, but when excessively used they can impact the functionality and even cause app kills. To make sure a better experience for all users, Google will block foreground service beginnings from the background for applications that are aiming for a new platform.
To make it simpler for going away from this pattern, Google is launching a new expedited task in JobScheduler that gets improved network access, process priority, and runs instantly irrespective of power restrictions like Doze or Battery Saver. For back-compatibility, Google has also created expedited tasks into the most recent launch of Jetpack WorkManager Library.
Moreover, for eliminating distractions for users, now Google is delaying the display of a few foreground service notifications by up to 10 seconds. This provides short-lived jobs an opportunity to finish before displaying their notifications.
18. Easier Debugging and Testing of Changes
To make it simpler for Android app developers to test the opt-in transformations that can impact their apps, Google has made many of them toggleable. Using the toggles, developers can forcefully enable as well as disable the changes separately from adb or Developer options.
How to Get Android 12 on Your Google Pixel Device
Although the Android 12 Developer Preview is not recommended or favorable for end-users as it may not be consistent, you can try it in case you have a Pixel 5, Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 4, Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 4 XL, Pixel 3a XL, Pixel 3a, and Pixel 4a. Just download and install the Android 12 Developer Preview to give it a try.
Blog Source- https://www.mindinventory.com/blog/first-android-12-developer-preview/
