Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed

Android 8.0 Oreo, thoroughly reviewed
arstechnica.com

But I think we've been burned too many times by Google's promises to "make it easier" for OEMs to update devices and other such promises, or at least these projects always sounded much better than they turned out to be. Hopefully this time it is different.

I would be curious to know when Project Treble started. I imagine something like this, and if it was serious enough, would take 3-4 years of development and thought put into it? If it's less than two years then I would probably be worried about just how much thought and development Google put into it. I would also be disappointed that Google only started taking such a project seriously two years ago - or seven years after Android officially launched. Some could say this "feature" should have been enabled from day one.

The Good

Project Treble isn't a silver bullet for Android's update problems, but it's the first time in a long time Google has changed Android to make system update development easier.

I love the smaller "by the way" notification section. It really cleans up the notification panel, while still letting the user read less-important notifications at their leisure. I just wish I could demote any app to "less important," regardless of what version of Android it targets.

The automatically-colored media notifications look amazing! Sometimes I cycle through songs with the notification panel just to see what it comes up with.

The background processing lockdown has been a long time coming. Finally, we'll see the end of wakelocks.

Picture-in-picture on a phone is great for videos, and Google's experiments with things like Google Maps look very promising.

EmojiCompat and downloadable fonts means Android users should get new emojis super fast. You don't even need Android O for this to work—it will work on Android 4.4 and up!

The Bad

Google's revamp of notification controls has the side effect of removing fine-grained notification controls for most apps. We'll have to wait for every app to upgrade to get the controls back.

The ambient notification display gets a huge downgrade, changing from showing the full notification panel to only showing tiny status bar icons.

Snoozing notifications could be a great feature, but the timing options are so limited that it's useless. A max of one hour? Seriously? Give me a time picker.

The disabling of Chrome's picture-in-picture support specifically for youtube.com is downright sleazy. That's not how Web browsers are supposed to act.

The Ugly

Updates—they're still a huge problem. Here's hoping Treble actually helps.

1. Do you charge it to 100% and live it alone until charge goes to 0%?

2. Do you unplug it in the morning and use it "normally" and see what charge will be left when you put it again on a charger when you go to sleep?

Different use cases drains battery at a different rate and its hard to use a new phone/a phone with a new OS "normally" because more time than usual will go into trying to understand it.

It may also happen that you start using the phone at a time when your phone usable is above your average.