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Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

arstechnica.com

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Re: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

#91
post #46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of YouTube content isn't music though. Why are they so user hostile - e.g. why can't I listen to talks/podcasters in the background while browsing the internet?

If you're in the US, you can do that with Youtube Red.

But I'm not, so I'm not allowed to. I wouldn't have a problem with it if I could - paying for ad-free YouTube with added features seems like a fair deal to me.

Re: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

#93
post #21

If it's true that Chrome on Oreo genuinely prevents picture-in-picture for YouTube specifically , that's a troubling precedent to set. Why not allow all websites to enable/disable PiP (maybe via a meta tag, in the way that tab theme colours already work)? If I query https://m.youtube.com while emulating a Nexus 5X, the response contains: Is that what is preventing PiP on YouTube or is it some sort of underhanded inte…

Shared below too. Just as a quick point and I will drop it in the article comments too. I'm the lead for our Chrome Developer Relations team. Chrome doesn't disable picture in picture for Youtube, Youtube disable it in Chrome. They listen to resize events iirc and then exit fullscreen mode (the only way to currently get to pip mode in Chrome).

This is unclear. Do you work for Youtube or Android?

E: This is a simple and earnest question. Why the downvotes?

Re: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you aware that Android has built-in tinting capability? It's under Display > Night Light. There's a quick tile for it too.

That's only available on 7.0+ phones with hardware support (currently I think only the pixels?)

Context (emphasis mine):

>> After my Pixel updated recently to Oreo, being frustrated by a constant notification for Twilight

Re: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

#96
post #94

I really hope they updated the audio stack to make latency lower. Right now doing anything sub 10ms with audio is impossible.

It says right in the article that there is a new low latency audio API.

Yeah, I saw that at the end of the article. A little short on details. I hope it really is low latency though, and can be used for real-time synths, trackers, dj mixers, etc. It would be nice in the future to have a small attachable audio interface we could hook up to our phones or tablets and work out some tunes on the go. I hope Android can start doing the same things as iOS in this regard.

Hopefully we'll see some reviews once hardware and apps make a foray into this new API.

Re: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

#97

I knew Project Treble was exciting, but this is really interesting: >Treble promises to change everything. Malchev says that Treble standardizes Android hardware support to such a degree that generic Android builds compiled from AOSP can boot and run on every Treble device. In fact, these "raw AOSP" builds are what will be used for some of the CTS testing Google requires all Android OEMs to pass in order to license t…

> By that I mean certain features will be missing from updated phones because the HAL layer doesn't support it.

What features are you referring to? Also, will that be worse than the current situation for Android devices?

Re: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you aware that Android has built-in tinting capability? It's under Display > Night Light. There's a quick tile for it too.

That's only available on 7.0+ phones with hardware support (currently I think only the pixels?)

Not really. It worked for me even on old CM13 (6.0-based) on ZenFone 2. That's a custom ROM, though.

Re: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

#99

If it's true that Chrome on Oreo genuinely prevents picture-in-picture for YouTube specifically , that's a troubling precedent to set. Why not allow all websites to enable/disable PiP (maybe via a meta tag, in the way that tab theme colours already work)? If I query https://m.youtube.com while emulating a Nexus 5X, the response contains: Is that what is preventing PiP on YouTube or is it some sort of underhanded inte…

For what it's worth, you can disable PiP on your own site by responding to the JS event and changing the value of video.webkitPresentationMode. https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/Gen...

Re: Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

#100
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of YouTube content isn't music though. Why are they so user hostile - e.g. why can't I listen to talks/podcasters in the background while browsing the internet?

Try Firefox for Android - it allows background nedia streaming, and even puts controls in the notification drawer. It also allows adblocking, extensions, has the amazing reader mode which makes the most unusable websites readable again. The current version 55 is a little slower than Chrome on my 3 year old phone, but performance in the past few major versions has definitely improved. The nighty developer build of Fir…

Nice suggestion, but note that, since Google started abusing the page visibility API for their scummy ends, using Firefox is not enough by itself in order to play YouTube media in background. To restore its ability to do so, you also need this add-on:

Video Background Play Fix https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-backgro...

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