The past week has been the Big-O week for all of us involved in Google's ecosystem and the Android world. The follow-up to Android 7.0/7.1 Nougat was announced as Android O — full name still unknown — and the developer preview images were made available for those who want to test it out and check all the new features.

That caused our inboxes to overflow with tips of all the major and minor and super minor changes in Android O coming from our readers, and it got our team to work overtime to verify and report them. We still have many O feature spotlights on our to-do list, some of which we're still investigating, but in the meantime, we thought we'd put together one list of all the Android O features we've covered so far.

We've grouped features by type from new APIs and options available to developers to all the major and minor interface changes as well as the drawbacks. We've also added a short description or quote to quickly explain what each feature is. This should hopefully serve as a refresher for those who may have missed a couple of articles during the busy week and a one-stop place to check new features as we cover them in the future.

New capabilities

Important usability and interface improvements

  • You can snooze individual notifications for 15m, 30m, or 1hr: "Snoozing is available when you slide a notification to the side just a bit. It's right next to the settings button that we already have in Android. Tap it and the notification will snooze for 15 minutes (or 30minutes or 1hour). If you didn't mean to do that, there's an undo button available for a moment."
  • The Files app now shows up in the app drawer, has a few new features: "Android has included a built-in file manager since 6.0 Marshmallow called Files, but it hasn't had an app drawer icon. Instead, Android shows a 'Downloads,' app, which is technically just a shortcut to the Downloads folder in Files with some functionality removed. Starting with Android O, the Downloads shortcut has been replaced by the full Files application."
  • It looks like Android may be getting native support for themes: There is a new section for "Device theme" in the Display settings, with two options. Themes feel like they're still in testing proto-stage right now, so they might go away in future dev options.

Medium to minor interface changes

Small drawbacks

  • Expandable quick settings only work when tapping the text, not the icon: "Quick Settings toggles still exist in Android O, but the way you interact with them is quite different. Expanding requires you to tap the text instead of the icon. The text in question if right under the icon—not the sort of thing that looks like a button you'd press. Tapping the icon toggles them on and off. Long-pressing does still open the corresponding full settings page for the tile."
  • Granular battery usage for system-level items and services is gone: "In the battery usage breakdown list, tapping any item that is a system-level service like System, Apps, Services, Phone idle, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi doesn't do anything. It looks like you can't access the details screen for them anymore."
  • Battery percentage indicator can't be placed in the status bar icon anymore: "Unfortunately, in the Android O Developer Preview, placing the percentage inside the icon is no longer an option. This will no doubt annoy some customization enthusiasts, but the percentage can still be displayed alongside the battery icon."

That's it for now, but we'll keep this post updated as we publish more Android O feature spotlights. And please, let us know if you've discovered something that we haven't covered yet.