latest
Since Android 8.1 (even 8.0 on Pixel phones), the OS has had a divisive prompt that warns you if you toggle mobile data on or off using the quick settings toggle. Personally, I find this useful, since I never turn data off intentionally. If I do, it's probably by mistake, so this extra step is a good way of mitigating against that risk.
With the launch of the second developer preview of Android back in May, Google added a surprising and useful feature to the Overview interface. You could highlight and copy text and also make use of Android's smart text selection functionality. Optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities meant you could also pull text from images.
Bluetooth section and NFC toggle in Android P DP4 moved to 'Connection preferences' settings submenu
One of the more minor additions to the previous Android P DP3 release was a series of Bluetooth changes, including an aptly descriptive "Previously connected devices" section and a reorganization for the Bluetooth toggle into its own Bluetooth section. Now DP4 has further reorganized both that Bluetooth subsection and the NFC toggle into the "Connection preferences" subsection.
The recently-released Android P developer preview 4 is meant to be one of the last two release candidates—according to Google's initial released timeline—and in general that means polishing up existing features more than introducing a lot of new ones. Even so, a few new tweaks are present in this latest build, like a new slider for controlling call volume in Settings -> Sound.
Android P is shaping up to be a pretty sizable milestone for the platform, but although the beta releases have been surprisingly stable, they aren't without bugs. They are "previews" after all, and in the latest image, there is one small regression worth noting: SafetyNet tests are failing. As a result, services like Google Pay which check for device security using SafetyNet are also broken, though not every phone on the latest previews is affected. According to a few recent reports, a server-side fix for the issue may be rolling out.
Read update
We'd thought that the latest Android P developer preview wouldn't be seeing very many visual changes given that it's the fourth of its kind, but it looks like we were wrong. DP4 has brought a pretty extensive iconography refresh, removing the fill from icons across the entire interface.
One of the most divisive (read: generally disliked) features in Android P is the new gesture navigation system, which brings all the convenience of unintuitive, non-descriptive interface elements together with precisely none of the visual space-savings you'd expect to gain from gestures. The latest Android DP4/Beta 3 tweaks the pill-based app switcher a bit, stretching the track for the slider to fill the full width of your screen and expanding app previews to be a lot bigger.
Google introduced the dark launcher theme on the Pixel 2 and 2 XL, eventually expanding it to the first gen Pixels with the Android 8.1 update. However, there was no way to change the theme manually—it was always based on the wallpaper. Google recently promised a toggle, and now it's here in the latest Android P preview.
Essential may have given up on its next smartphone, but it hasn't given up on the one it has. Updates have been delivered with Pixel-level timeliness. Case in point: The Essential's updated Android P beta is rolling out today, a mere hour or so after Google. Monthly security updates for July are also rolling out. And, you guessed it, Google only just pushed those patches out, too.
It's showing up a little later than we expected, but the fourth Android P Developer Preview is rolling out today. It's available on the first and second generation Pixel phones as both a system image and an OTA file. However, the Android beta program updates aren't going out quite yet.
Icons can either make an operating system look very modern or very dated. You could have the most state-of-the-art OS, but the wrong icon will make that OS seem like it's straight out of 1995. Google knows this, and so it's updated all of its system apps and iconless apps to show a new, contemporary-looking icon.
Android O's first developer preview brought us screen overlay notifications. These are sometimes helpful, but they're also rather annoying for apps like Facebook Messenger that use chat heads. Today's release of the fourth and last O developer preview allows users to hide that notification, although there are still some other annoying ones that can't be hidden.
Android O's fourth developer preview was released today, and you know what that means: more feature spotlights. We already covered the new octopus Easter egg, but there are still a few other changes, even in the final developer preview. The lockscreen and notification panel have both seen a few minor visual tweaks.
Since its inception, Android has featured little Easter eggs in its settings based on whatever dessert name was in that version. For instance, Android 4.2 and 4.3 Jellybean's Easter egg involved a ton of jellybeans scattered on your screen that you could move around. For Android O's fourth developer preview, the jokesters at Google threw in a little octopus that floats around your screen.