Google has officially revealed that Android 8.0 will be called Oreo; marking the second time that the company has used an official trademark in its naming scheme. The name was suitably released during the solar eclipse in the US, seeing that the sun vaguely resembled an Oreo for a short time.
Android Oreo brings with it a host of new features, including picture-in-picture multitasking. It almost looks like what’s going on with YouTube’s picture-in-picture option; except expanded to other apps. And then there is the Notification Dots, which moves notifications into speech bubbles above the app icons instead.
More importantly, Google Play Protect is being introduced as part of the Google suite of apps with Android Oreo. This is effectively a built in security app, similar to Microsoft’s Windows Defender. Mobile security is becoming a big deal, the built in antivirus might help against the growing amount of malware targeting Android devices.
Android 8.0 Oreo is being pushed out to the Android Open Source Project today, and will be rolled out of testing in phases. Google is doing carrier testing with the Pixel and Nexus 5X/6P right now, which means that the update should be released by the end of the year.
[Source: Google]
