Shortly after it Google I/O announcement of the upcoming
version of Android, simply dubbed
Android M for now, Google released its first developer preview for a handful of
Nexus devices. I immediately installed that build on my Nexus 5 and noticed a
few things off the bat and took a few preliminary.
I have been using the Android M developer Preview on my
daily device for a couple of days now and have some subjective thoughts on the early
release, especially compared to the Lollipop 5.1.1 release only days earlier.
The UI largely unchanged from Lollipop: Google has just
moved its Material design language across the company’s portfolio and is
probably not eager to move away from that soon. There are a few minor
differences, such as the controversial decision to make the app drawer scroll
vertically instead of horizontally paged and the font on the screen. The font
changes feels largely irrelevant, but the app drawer differences are immediately
noticeable, making it much more useful, if uglier.
Stability is greatly improved compared to the first Android
L Developer previews, which were a testing ground for the new design language
and the new Android RunTime, and UI performance and battery life feel
comparable to what Android 5.1.1 offers. Game performance feels slightly worse,
although the Nexus 5 has very little trouble with any Android so this is almost
meaningless, and I’m sure benchmarks would show very little difference between
the two latest builds.
The new feature that is most useful is the revamped Do Not
Disturb, which while not perfect is a large improvement over the previous
volume solutions. The new permissions model will likely become a critical piece
of the Android experience as apps become compiled in the new SDK and support
the granular permission model, and it is mildly useful, but I was able to make
a few apps unresponsive or produce strange results when certain permissions
were revoked.
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