Did you expect to wake up to a new version of Android this morning? That's exactly what you're getting, and Google's letting the information fly fast and hard (... and in some cases, slightly before we expected) about the latest iteration of their mobile OS, at this time only known as "N." Like previous... previews... N doesn't have a version number or name yet, but it's chock-full of new features for users and developers alike, and the list of those features will grow as we near the final release. Do you want to upgrade Xiaomi phone to the Android N?  Let's break down the key facts.

1. Emergency Info comes to your lockscreen

While stuff like improved multi-tasking and enhanced doze mode are certainly making the headlines as far as ‘key’ Android N features are concerned, there are likely tons of ‘little things’ just hiding under the surface that might not revolutionize your mobile experience, but still manages to make things just that little bit sweeter. That’s exactly the category Android N’s “Emergency Info” feature falls into.Simply put, if you end up in an ambulance or emergency room and can’t speak for yourself, your phone could end up ‘speaking’ for you thanks to a new feature that lets you specific information about yourself including your blood type, known allergies, if you’re an organ donor, your date of birth, name, and your address.While these might not be things that you want to fall into “just anybody’s hands”, they could prove invaluable if you are incapacitated and an emergency service doesn’t know who to contact on your behalf.

Of course, this feature is only useful if an emergency service (doctor, ambulance, nurse, etc) knows to look, and so it’s unfortunate that the feature is a bit buried. In order to access it, someone would have to grab your phone, attempt to unlock it, notice you have a password/pin, and then hit the “emergency” key. From there, you’ll find a tab that says “Emergency Info”. That’s a lot of steps.As for setting the feature up to begin with? That’s actually a lot easier. The new feature is found under “Users” in settings. You’ll then be presented with a little form and you’ll be able to pick and choose how much information to disclose.

2. Split-screen Multitasking and Picture-in-Picture

One of the reasons that some users prefer an OEM Android experience is that stock Android does lack certain multitasking features that can be found on other devices, but with Android N, Google is seeking to rectify this. Diving into today’s Android N developer preview, we can see that Google has finally included native support for a multi-window mode in Android and there’s also a picture-in-picture mode, similar to the one found in Apple’s iOS 9.Before you get too excited however, developers will need to add support for multi-window but once done, Android N will pick up the heavy lifting and you’ll be able to use two apps side-by-side. As part of the split screen feature, you’ll be able to adjust the size of the split as well and, although developers will be able to set a minimum size, it should mean you have a true multi-tasking experience.Quite interesting is how you activate split screen mode: just like the multi window feature on Samsung smartphones – like the new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge – you can activate the split screen feature by tapping on the button on an app in the recent apps window.

Split screen mode is a long overdue feature for Android and, by enabling it in Android N by default, Google is saving OEMs from having to do the heavy lifting in their own custom interfaces. However, whether this means the likes of Samsung and Huawei will adjust the ways their multi window features work to take advantage of Google’s new features – which will hopefully result in a lighter custom skin – remains to be seen.Android N also sees Google introduce a new picture-in-picture mode that essentially allows an app to float around the interface in an overlayed window. In its Android N overview, Google uses the example of the video player for the picture-in-picture mode but before you get too excited about the feature, the full picture-in-picture overview suggests this is limited to just Android TV.However, Google does mention larger devices as well, hopefully meaning larger tablets will also be able to run the feature. Granted, this is a developer preview and we’re hopeful that Google will allow this to run on any device; given that Samsung have enabled this in the video player on their smartphones and Apple have done the same on the iPhone, there’s very little reason for Google to limit this to larger devices.

If you happen to have two different applications open at the same time, say Google Keep and Google Messenger, Android N will allow you to drag and drop text between the two applications. Once you type something out in one app, just select the text that you’d like to move, and drag it over to the other app. It’s really that easy. There’s no need to press the copy button (although you can copy/paste between apps) or anything of the sort. Just drag and drop. Below you’ll find a short video showing off this feature in action.

While multi-window in and of itself isn’t too buggy at the moment, this drag and drop feature is. I’ve only gotten it to work with smaller pieces of text that are 1-4 words long, and not all apps play nice with it as of yet.
Looking past the bugs though, this is one killer feature that I’m really happy Google is focusing on bringing to Android. It’ll make multitasking on mobile even easier, especially on Android tablets like the Pixel C or Nexus 9.

3. New Data Saver feature will help you save precious mobile data

Android already does a pretty good job at making sure you don’t go over your monthly data allotment. Users have been able to set a cellular data limit from the settings menu for some time, but now in Android N, there’s a new feature that will let you take it one step further.If you happen to have a small data plan or if it’s just the end of the month and you’re running low on precious gigabytes, background application data consumption might have been a problem for you in the past. So if you don’t have access to a Wi-Fi connection all day and don’t want your device using a bunch of data while you’re not using your phone, this new feature is for you. It’s called Data Saver (no, not that data saver), and it’s available in the Data Usage section of the new-and-improved settings menu. When you flip the switch, Data Saver will block background data usage for your entire device. It’ll also allow the OS to tell other applications to use less data in the foreground wherever possible as well

If you don’t want all apps to be affected by this change, there’s a fix for that. You’ll be able to easily whitelist applications from Data Saver to allow background data usage.This isn’t the biggest change we’ve seen in Android N so far, but it’s a little one that will surely help some folks save lots of data each month

4. Recent apps gets a few new tricks and tweaks

Android N is bringing a number of aesthetic changes to notifications, settings, and even quick settings. It’s also bringing a few tweaks to the recent apps menu as well. While the biggest and most obvious change is the new split-window mode, the recent apps key also is introducing a new “quick switching” mode. Simply put, if you double tap the recent apps button, you’ll quickly switch between your current and previous app. If you keep tapping the button, you’ll also cycle through the rest of your open apps. Once you stop cycling it will have a countdown, and once that ends, the app you’re currently on will resume as full-screen.

You might also have noticed that the cards themselves have been enlarged. These larger cards really don’t make much of a difference functionality wise, but they arguably look better than before. Of course their larger size might also making scrolling through them a slight bit harder.

Because screenshots just don’t convey these app switching features all that well, at the top we’ve included a video that better shows off how all this works. I also very briefly took a look at the split screen mode above, as you’ll see above.

5. Notification shade gets a redesign and tons of new functionality

One of my favorite parts about the Android operating system is the way it handles notifications. In Android N, though, the notification shade is getting a huge redesign and a lot more functionality. We already walked you through the new quick settings panel in N, but here we’re going to focus on the notifications themselves.For starters, the notification panel looks much different now. Instead of all the card-like notifications being separated by a small blank space, notifications are now displayed in a single white page separated by a small gray line. This allows it to look much cleaner and a lot less cluttered. What will perhaps help the notification shade look even better is that there’s a new API in Android N that allows developers to bundle notifications.

What does this mean? If you’ve ever received a handful of emails at one time, your device will put those notifications together in a single card in an attempt to save room in the notification panel. From there you’ll need to either swipe the notification away or tap it to launch into the application — hardly an elegant solution. This new API is here to fix that. The new notification bundling feature allows you to essentially unpack all those notifications so you can interact with them directly. Here’s how it works: Once you see a bundled notification in your shade, you can unbundle it by swiping downwards with two fingers. Then smaller notifications will appear underneath that, allowing you to take action on each one individually.

In addition, you’ll now be able to reply to notifications directly from the notification shade, just like you can do now with Hangouts or Google Messenger. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Previously, if you were to receive a Hangouts message, you could press the Reply button and your device would open up a reply window, separate from the actual app. Now this functionality is getting brought to third-party applications, thanks to the new RemoteInput API.

6. Settings get revamped

Before today, one of the rumors associated with Android N was the introduction of a hamburger menu within the settings which made is easier to move between the various parts of the settings. We can now confirm this is true.Anytime you enter into a sub-setting, you find an easy to access hamburger button on the upper left that lets you access all the other settings. You’ll also notice that this hamburger menu is divided into the same sections as you’ll find in the main settings: Wireless & networks, Device, Personal, and System.It’s not just the hamburger menu that’s changed here in the new settings. You’ll also find many more entries this time around, this includes breaking up previously grouped categories like “Sound” and “Notifications”, as well as giving options like “Tap & Pay” their own listing within settings. Some of the sub-menus have received visual makeovers as well, with storage getting completely revamped, and sound and notifications also have their own new designs (obviously, since they are no longer grouped).

7. Quick Settings gets a makeover

While Android Marshmallow didn’t stray too much from Lollipop visually, it looks like Android N is making more significant changes in that arena. There are changes to the notification style, settings UX, and plenty of other little adjustments to the aesthetics with Android N. We will be detailing all these things a bit later, but for this “Diving into Android N” feature, I wanted to talk specifically about the new and improved Quick Settings.

Upon pulling down the notification menu, one of the first things you’ll notice is there is now a single set of notification icons within easy reach. By default, you are presented with Wi-Fi, mobile data, battery DnD mode, and flashlight. While flashlight, Wi-Fi, and mobile data work with one click, DnD Mode and battery (both seen right below), open up larger interfaces that allow you to better see what’s going on without having to fully open the associated settings page.

You’ll notice I said “by default”. The great thing here is that the options that show up are fully customizable.All you have to do is expand open the whole quick settings area (which is now paginated), and click on the “edit” button. From the Quick Settings Edit page you can determine which icons will show up in this minimized first row, as well as disable and enable different quick settings. If you have turned on the System UI Tuner, there’s even a few extras added here like the ability to quickly toggle on night mode.As you can see from the images above, Google is making great strides to improve quick settings in Android N, but it doesn’t stop with Google itself, as Android N is adding a new API that lets developers define their own Quick Settings tiles, which give “users easy access to key controls and actions in [the] apps”.

In their developer blog, Google further iterates on what these developer quick tiles are meant to be used for: “Quick Settings tiles are reserved for controls or actions that are either urgently required or frequently used, and should not be used as shortcuts to launching an app.”As with all Android N early features, there’s no saying for sure what changes will and won’t make it into the final version of Android N, but considering they are even creating a specific API for making new quick setting tiles, it is more than likely this is something that will make the final cut.

8. ICU4J Android Framework APIs

ICU4J is an open-source, widely used set of Java libraries providing Unicode  and globalization support for software applications. Android N  exposes a subset of the ICU4J APIs in the Android framework for app developers  to use under the android.icu package. These APIs use  localization data present on the device. As a result, you can reduce your APK  footprint by not compiling the ICU4J libraries into your APK; instead, you can  simply call out to them in the framework. (In this case, you may want to provide  multiple versions  of your APK, so users running versions of Android lower than Android N  can download a version of the app that contains the ICU4J libraries.)


9. Keep unwanted callers away with deeper number blocking and call screening

Android devices can do pretty much anything nowadays. But in their search for complexity and power, it seems sometimes Google forgets to take care of the little things in Android. One clear example is the platform’s new call blocking and screening features, which come baked into Android N. Things are very inconsistent across manufacturers, carriers and devices. How you block your unwanted calls depends on your handset, which makes things confusing.With Android N, Google aims to bring things to another level by providing true support for call locking and call screening.

Obviously, we already have ways to block callers. What is it that makes the new number blocking feature special? I suppose the key element here is consistency.For starters, Android N will standardize number blocking. This will get rid of confusion when switching between devices, as the procedure will be either identical or very similar.Because blocking numbers will now work on a system level, blacklisted contacts will be blocked from both calling and texting. In addition, it won’t be as easy to lose your blocked numbers. Number blocking can persist across factory resets, as well as switching devices (when using Backup & Restore).Of course, phone and SMS apps will be able to access the list of blocked numbers, but they won’t be the only ones enjoying this neat new treat. An API will be provided for service providers to be able to tap into the list. This means your carrier will be able to block callers from a service level when you blacklist it on your phone. Once this is done, there is no way for unwanted callers to reach you.

But what if you think completely blocking a number is a bit too extreme? Call screening will make things a bit simpler for you whenever you want to take it a little easier. Call screening allows the device to recognize numbers better and perform certain actions instead of blocking altogether.This feature can simply reject specific calls, not record them in the call log or stop them from showing up in the notification area.These certainly won’t be the biggest features coming to Android N, but if there is something I have learnt is that these smaller upgrades are what makes a true difference for our mobile experiences. Sometimes we don’t want flashy new features, we just want things to work.
We know calls are becoming archaic as mobile connectivity evolves, but that is exactly why we need to perfect call and SMS control.