5 cool features of Android Oreo

Sweet news. We’re now rolling out the new Oreo operating system to our Android phones. Technically known as Android 8.0, Oreo is aimed at improving the speed and efficiency of your phone.

Oreo has many cool new features. Here are five of our favorites.

Picture in picture
Oreo’s new picture-in-picture mode lets you minimize videos while you’re multitasking. So if you’re watching a YouTube video or you’re on a Duo video call, you can quickly minimize the video to a corner of your display and continue with other tasks simultaneously. It’s easy to do. Just tap the Home button while the video is playing and Oreo will shrink it to a small rectangular screen within your display. Tap that screen and you get options to close the video, return to full-screen mode or access playback controls. You can also drag the screen to another corner of your display.

Faster app shortcuts
Long-press on an app icon and shortcuts to various app functions will appear in a window, so you can jump right into the action you want to take. For example, long press your Twitter icon and you can tap directly to search, post a tweet or send a DM. Long press your Gmail icon and you can tap to immediately compose an email. Long pressing an app icon is also the quickest way to access the App Info page for an app or add a widget.

Google Play Protect
Google does a very good job of vetting the apps in its Google Play Store but it can’t catch every malicious app, so bad actors do, on occasion, make their way to the Play Store. Google Play Protect adds a new layer of security to prevent malicious apps from making the leap to your device. It automatically scans all apps for malware before and after you install them and sends you a notification if it detects something suspicious.

Background Execution Limits
A lot of apps tend to run wild in the background and drain power from your battery even when you’re not using them. Oreo’s new Background Execution Limits restrict the actions that apps can perform in the background to extend your battery life, potentially by hours. You can also now place restrictions on data usage by individual apps. Here’s how. First, access the App Info screen for the app you’d like to restrict by long pressing the icon and tapping App Info; or by going to Settings then Apps & Notifications; or by dragging the app icon up to App Info on the home screen or in the drawer. Once you’re at App Info, tap Data Usage, then toggle off Background Data.

Smart Text Selection
Let’s say you’re reading an email and you want to copy an address from the email and paste it into Google Maps to see the location. Actions like this have always been a bit cumbersome and tricky. But Oreo’s Smart Text Selection makes it simple by recognizing the nature of the text as soon as you select it. So if you select an address, Oreo will instantly surface an icon for Google Maps, with the address already inserted into the search field. Select a phone number and you get a shortcut to the dialer, with the number ready to tap and call.

Now that the Oreo update is here, maybe it’s time to upgrade your phone. You can shop for all our Android phones at the CREDO Store.