The latest Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread on Reddit in which Google’s software engineers participated a few hours back revealed that the upcoming build of the company’s operating system is still without a name, in addition to disclosing a wide variety of new details about Android O, i.e. Android 8.0. According to one Googler, the team still hasn’t decided on the snack after which it’s going to name the next major iteration of Android but promised that the decision will be made by the end of the summer.
The team also confirmed that the color of the notification shade in the latest developer preview of Android O isn’t a bug or a temporary change as the team intended for the element to be whiter than it is in Nougat. This particular design change was prompted by the firm’s desire to do a better job of matching the look of the notification shade and the Quick Settings section of the OS and a similar argument fueled the latest redesign of the notification bar. Owners of the Google Pixel and Pixel XL can also expect improved audio quality from Bluetooth headphones and earphones with Android O, the tech giant’s engineers said, adding that not all of the software additions will ultimately make it to Google’s 2016 flagship duo; the enhanced color calibration capabilities of the system won’t be supported by the Pixel lineup due to its specific requirements that require a degree of implementation at a hardware level, one Googler said. The AMA also revealed that the Alphabet-owned company is still hard at work developing a native theme engine for Android but continues to face challenges in this aspect, many of which are related to the lack of stable APIs that would allow the firm’s software engineers to define what can and can’t be customized by the users.
Employees of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant also touched upon the discontinuation of the Blobmoji system during their latest AMA, explaining how the old platform wasn’t suitably equipped to support the rapid and still ongoing expansion of Unicode characters and warranted a major overhaul. The team admitted that their biggest challenge in Android O development was making Project Treble work as intended, adding that wearables and tablets are unlikely to receive major unique features following the release of the OS. The fourth developer preview of Android O is expected to be released by the end of the month and will contain near-final system images, with recent reports indicating that the rollout may actually be happening at this very moment, while the OS itself is expected to hit the stable channel at some point in August.