What’s new in Android Q?

Android Q Beta is the next version of the Android OS for smartphones.

Android Q, with stronger protections for user privacy, new ways to engage users, extended support for foldable, Vulkan extensions, and more!

Let’s see - what’s new in the latest mobile OS Android Q.

Android Q introduces a number of security features. This new OS extends the transparency and control that users have over data and app capabilities. Impacts can vary based on each app's core functionality, targeting, and other factors.

Privacy controls

To give users more control over their files and to limit file clutter, Android Q changes how apps can access files on the device's external storage, such as the files stored at the path/sd card. Android Q continues to use the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions, which correspond to the Storage user-facing runtime permission.

Some apps allow users to share media files with each other. For example, social media apps give users the ability to share photos and videos with friends.

Some apps use documents as the unit of storage in which users enter data that they might want to share with peers or import into other documents.

Better management on a device contains

File management and media creation apps typically manage groups of files in a directory hierarchy.

You might encounter situations where your app needs to work with a particular media file in native code, such as a file that another app has shared with your app or a media file from the user's media collection. In that case, begin your media file discovery in your Java-based or Koltin-based code, then pass the file's associated file descriptor into your native code.

Some photographs contain location information in their Exif metadata, which allows users to view the place where a photograph was taken. Because this location information is sensitive, Android Q by default hides this information from your app if it has a sandboxed view into external storage.

Control on location access

Android Q gives users more control over when apps can get access to the device location. When an app running on Android Q requests location access, users will see the dialog. This dialog allows users to grant location access to two different extents: while in use (foreground only) or all the time (foreground and background).

Restriction for background app

Android Q places restrictions apps for background activities. It helps minimize interruptions for the user and keeps the user more in control of what's shown on their screen. It applies to all apps running on Android Q, even those that target Android 9 or lower.

If your app is running the latest beta version of Android Q and tries to launch an activity from the background, the platform sends a warning message and displays the warning toast message on the screen.

Restrictions on accessing data

In Android Q, there are several restrictions placed on accessing data and system identifiers. These changes help protect users' privacy.

The platform no longer keeps track of contacts affinity information. If your app conducts a search on the user's contacts, the results are no longer ordered by frequency of interaction.

Devices running on Android Q transmit randomized MAC addresses by default. If your app handles an enterprise use case, the platform provides several new APIs. If your app doesn't have the permission and you try asking for information about the identifiers anyway, the platform's response varies based on a target SDK version.

Improvements on camera and connectivity

Apps targeting Android Q cannot enable or disable Wi-Fi. If needed, use a settings panel to prompt users to enable and disable Wi-Fi. Manual configuration of the list of Wi-Fi networks is now restricted to system apps and device policy controllers (DPCs). A given DPC can be either the device owner or the profile owner.

Android Q applies new restrictions on access to full camera metadata, and FINE location permission now required for many connectivity workflows. Android Q adds several enhancements to a monochrome camera support. New Y8 stream format support to improve memory efficiency. A logical multi-camera device may use a monochrome camera as a physical sub-camera to achieve better low-light image quality.

Changes for apps

The Android Q platform includes behavior changes that may affect your app. To help ensure app stability and compatibility, the platform started restricting which non-SDK interfaces your app can use in the previous version of Android. Android Q includes updated lists of restricted non-SDK interfaces based on collaboration with Android developers and the latest internal testing. If your app relies on non-SDK interfaces, you should begin planning a migration to SDK alternatives.

Security controls

You can now tell the system to allow a user to authenticate using their device PIN, pattern, or password if they cannot authenticate using their biometric input for some reason. You can also check if a device supports biometric authentication prior.

Android Q adds support for peer-to-peer connections. This feature enables your app to prompt the user to change the access point that the device is connected to describe the properties of a requested network. The peer-to-peer connection is used for non-network-providing purposes, such as bootstrapping configuration for secondary devices like Chromecast and Google Home hardware.

Android Q adds support for your app to add network credentials for a device to auto-connect to a Wi-Fi access point. You can supply suggestions for which network to connect. When the platform connects to one of the network suggestions, the settings will show text that attributes the network connection to the corresponding suggested app.

Android Q adds native support for both DNS over TLS and for specialized DNS lookups.

Call quality enhancement

Android Q adds the ability to collect information about the quality of the ongoing IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) calls, including quality to and from the network, on devices that support the feature. It improves on how to call intents are handled. The new API provides interfaces for you to modify outgoing calls made by the Android platform. For example, third-party apps might cancel calls and reroute them over VoIP.

It provides your app with a means to identify calls not in the user's address book as potential spam calls, and to have spam calls silently rejected on behalf of the user. Information about these blocked calls is logged as blocked calls in the call log to provide greater transparency to the user when they are missing calls.

Media and graphics improvements

Android Q gives an app the ability to capture audio playback from other apps. A performance point represents a codec's ability to render video at a specific height, width and frame rate.

Apps and games can use a thermal API to monitor changes on the device and take action to maintain lower power usage to restore the normal temperature. When the device reports thermal stress, apps and games can help by backing off ongoing activities to reduce power usage in various ways. Streaming apps could reduce resolution/bit rate or network traffic, a camera app could disable flash or intensive image enhancement, a game could reduce frame rate or polygon tessellation, a media app could reduce speaker volume, and a maps app could turn off GPS.

  

These are not all features; there are several new features will come with Android Q.

Initially, Android Q Beta is available for early adopters and developers on Google Pixel devices over-the-air (Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel, or Pixel XL). You can also manually download and flash your Pixel device to the latest Android Q Beta build.  Enrolling is a simple and fast process, and it's highly recommended for early adopters and developers. In most cases, you don't need to do a full reset of your data to move to Android Q Beta, but it’s recommended that you back up data before enrolling your device.

 

So, stay with us. We will be back soon with the latest information regarding Android Q.

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