22-August, Mountain View – Today Google is deploying the seventh major release of their mobile operating system Android, previously known by its codename ‘Android N‘. After a lot of publicity stunts around what the final name will be, they have announced the new version will be known as Android 7.0 Nougat.
When is the update ready for you?
The public beta testing is now closed, but if you try hard enough, you might still find the build somewhere in the Internet. Google is first going to deploy the new Nougat version to their own Nexus devices, such as the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player), the Pixel C tablet and the General Mobile 4G.
If you don’t own any of these devices and yet want to be one of the first people to use Android 7.0 Nougat you can buy the LG V20, which is going to be released in September and will come with that version pre-installed and ready for use.
Other early adopters, like Nextbit, will release the new OS to their phones later in Q4. For the majority of other devices however it is not yet announced when they are to receive the update and not all will receive the option to update. Just like with all new major releases, there will be some legacy models with hardware that will not be able to run Nougat and therefore there will be no official option for an update on those devices.
So what’s new?
A new major release of an operating system is always very exciting. The software is able to utilize better hardware and yet tries to improve the user experience even on older hardware with smarter code and other innovations. Here’s a compact view on what new things introduced in Nougat.
- Battery usage improvements (Doze on the Go)
- Support for new Vulkan API for 3D applications
- Data saving mode
- New Google core apps
- New UI and UX
- New notification system
- Actually working multi-window view
- Additional support for VR applications
- Additional setting customization
- Security hardening and file-based encryption
The Nougat statue
They have not only revealed some more insight on the new OS’s features and innovation but they have also now unwrapped the new Android statue located in the Googleplex HQ in Mountain View, California.
We have been on site only recently and could not spot it back then, but from now on it is readily available for the public and all sorts of selfie photoshoots. Check out the video attached below the article to see the actual unwrapping ceremony.
Where does Android OS come from?
If you are interested in the past of Android and want to check out how previous versions looked, you should also check out our feature “History of Android“.
YouTube: Android Nougat Statue Unwrapping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xn9iq3lG_w
Photo credit: Google
Source: Frederic Lardinois (TechCrunch) / Sameer Samat (Google) / LG Newsroom / Abner Li (9to5)
