Android 12 Is A Major Revamp: This Is What You Need To Know

Unlike the last several versions of Android, the twelfth installment appears to be a major revamp of the operating system with iOS-like rounded buttons stacked as tiles to help improve access to various features. Google says that it wants to make the experience more personal so that your phone adapts to you, not the other way around.

It’s a completely new look, which includes new colors, shapes, light and motion. The objective here is to make Android 12 more expressive and personal than it has ever been. Once it becomes available to the general public, users can completely personalize their phones.

This is what’s new:

• Once you pick a wallpaper, the system automatically decides which are the dominant colors, complementary ones and which look the best. Then it applies them to the entire OS including the notification shade, lock screen, volume controls, new widgets and more.
• The change in shapes, colors and features is due to Material You. It is a single design language meant to unify Google’s software and hardware ecosystems.
• Notification share, quick settings and power button have been redesigned to help get things done quickly. This has been done to make it easier to view app notifications, what you are watching or control any part of the OS through the revamped Quick Settings.
• Quick Settings now includes Google Pay and Home Controls but you can still customize it to the way you’d like it to be.
• Long pressing of the power button brings up the Google Assistant. It can be used to make a phone call, open apps, ask questions or read aloud text heavy articles.
• System responds to every tap, scroll and swipe with smoother motion and animations. For example, once you’ve read all your notifications, the clock will appear bigger on teh lock screen indicating that you’ve read all of them.
• Google has revamped the entire underlying system to be faster, more responsive and power efficient. This includes reducing the CPU time needed for core system services by up to 22% and reducing the use of big cores by the system server by up to 15%.
• Privacy is a major part of the new OS. It lets you know which apps are accessing your data and lets you control how much of said information these apps are allowed to access.
• Privacy Dashboard, lets you see the permissions that have been granted to apps and gives you the power to revoke said permission from a single place.
• There’s a new indicator at the top right of your status bar to let you know when your apps are accessing the mic and camera. If you would like to remove app access to said sensors, this can be done with the new toggles in Quick Settings.
• The new approximate location feature lets you limited apps to seeing your approximate location instead of your precise one. This way, you hold back apps from knowing exactly where you are.
• Android Private Compute Core allows you to keep your information private and local to your phone. It enables features like Live Catopjon, Now Playing and Smart Replies. All audio and language processing happens on the device and is isolated from teh network to preserve privacy.

If you would like to know more about Android 12 Beta click here. We should start seeing the completed OS in the upcoming Pixel phones that should be launched by Q3.