Here's what's new in Android 8.1 Dev Preview for Pixel and Nexus Devices

Here's what's new in Android 8.1 Dev Preview for Pixel and Nexus Devices

    

Here's what's new in Android 8.1 Dev Preview for Pixel and Nexus Devices
Android 8.1 Oreo Developer Preview is now Official and is readily available for the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel C, Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. The latest Android version comes with tons of new features, fixes and improvements. Google also shared the Android 8.1 Oreo change-log, which some of you will find rather interesting.


Neural networks API

The Neural Networks API (NNAPI) provides apps with hardware acceleration for on-device machine learning operations. The API supports on- device model creation, compilation, and execution. Apps typically do not use NNAPI directly; instead, NNAPI is meant to be called by machine learning libraries, frameworks, and tools that let developers train their models and deploy them on Android devices.

Notifications

Apps can now only make a notification alert sound once per second. Alert sounds that exceed this rate aren't queued and are lost. This change doesn't affect other aspects of notification behavior and notification messages still post as expected.

Improved targeting for low-RAM devices


Android 8.1 (API level 27) adds two new hardware-feature constants, FEATURE_RAM_LOW and FEATURE_RAM_NORMAL, to Package Manager. These constants allow you target the distribution of your apps and APK splits to normal- or low-RAM devices. 

These constants enable the Play store to promote a better user experience by highlighting apps especially well-suited to the capabilities of a given device.

Autofill framework updates

Android 8.1 Developer Preview (API level 27) provides several improvements to the Autofill Framework that you can incorporate into your apps.

Programmatic Safe Browsing actions
  • You can control whether your app reports known threats to Safe Browsing. 
  • You can have your app automatically perform a particular action—such as going back to safety—each time it encounters a URL that Safe Browsing classifies as a known threat.
WallpaperColors API

Android 8.1 Developer Preview (API level 27) adds support for managing wallpaper colors. This feature lets you create a WallpaperColors object from a bitmap, a drawable, or by using the first three most visually representative colors. You can also retrieve details of the first three noticeable colors of a wallpaper.

Shared memory API

Android 8.1 (API level 27) introduces a new SharedMemory class. This class allows you to create, map, and manage anonymous shared memory that can be used by multiple processes or apps.



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