Now that Android N has been released in its first developer preview form, much of the attention will be turning to what is on offer with the latest version of Android. In the grand scale of things, a number of the changes will be small tweaks to the groundwork that Android Lollipop brought with it and as such, they will require digging to really find or notice. However, shortly before today’s release, one particular change was leaked ahead of time. A change in the settings menu which brought with it visual tweaks, as well as being more informative.
With the settings being the location of information for the operating system, it stands to reason that Google would want Android users to be able to get more of that information quicker and that is exactly the case now with N. As it was previously reported the new settings in Android N provide a small overview for each section. So if you are on the main settings page, you can expect to see brief snippets of information directly related to each category. The best way to think of this is the Wi-Fi network listed under “Wi-Fi” or the remaining battery level listed under “Battery” and so on.
Digging deeper into the settings and again, as previously confirmed, each deeper level settings page now comes with a hamburger button, which looks to offer quicker access back to the main settings. So if you are in a deeper level of the battery settings for instance, you can tap the hamburger icon and quickly jump to the Display section. While this won’t save buckets of time, it could prove slightly useful if you are a couple of page levels deep. There are a number of other changes included too, like the separation of “Sound” and “Notifications”, as well as various more aspects of information included in certain sections like “Display” and “storage”. Although, it does seem the overriding theme of the changes for the settings is the concept of being more informative and also easier to navigate. You can see examples of how the new settings menu looks in the images below and the new hamburger overview menu in the main image above.
