The second developer preview of Android P is likely to ship with the ability to remember volume levels of individual Bluetooth devices, according to a new commit recently discovered in the repository of the Android Open Source Project. With the commit in question being merged with the main AOSP repository on Tuesday, the feature is likely to make its appearance with the new experimental build of Google’s mobile operating system which is expected to debut no later than early May.
As of the first developer preview of Android P, the omnipresent OS still keeps track of only a single volume level associated with Bluetooth devices – the one that was set last. That state of affairs can occasionally lead to startled users who e.g. put on Bluetooth headphones and have their default volume level set at the level previously used by a wireless speaker. As is usually the case with upcoming Android features, per-device Bluetooth volume level management is already supported by a number of OEMs like Samsung whose Android implementations have been capable of accounting for multiple Bluetooth gadgets in such a manner for years now. While the relevant AOSP commit has now been merged, there’s still a small chance that Google doesn’t activate the functionality in the second developer preview of Android P and launches it at a later date or not at all. In the meantime, users whose smartphones don’t support per-device Bluetooth volume level management natively can always resort to third-party apps that enable such capabilities.
Android P debuts a wide variety of new additions and changes meant to refine Google’s mobile OS even further, with its first developer preview being launched early last month. The second experimental version of the software is expected to be introduced at the next iteration of the Google I/O developer conference which is running from May 8 to May 10, with the OS then being scheduled to receive two more revisions before hitting the stable channel in the third quarter of the year, according to the official Android P roadmap Google revealed in March.