Android Q is 10 – What to Expect

Android 10 formerly known as Android Q is officially available for use. More than a year of development and testing Android 10 has been released with promising features nobody wants to miss out on.

Android Q is Android 10

Android 10 has improved previous features available to us and has also introduced many new things. Certain advancements are 5G support, improved privacy, better grasp on what happens with your device and much more. By the way , did I tell you that Android 10 would have system wide support for the Dark Mode ?

For now Android 10 is only available to devices which were a part of beta program and all Pixel devices. You can check if your devices are eligible for the beta program here. Just be sure to be signed in with your Google account and they will tell you if your devices are eligible for this program or not. Don’t be fooled if you see Android Q written on the the beta eligibility site, as they kind of forgot to change that

Android 10 Features

Privacy is the most important aspect which every user demands. Android 10 has fixed this problem or atleast improved the current situation by stricter permissions and a set of other commands which help you restrict the amount of data you share with your apps. Earlier granular permissions weren’t enough as apps refused to run if you disallow a certain permission now the apps can not force you to enable for usage.

Android 10 will randomize your MAC address everytime you connect with WiFi. Currently there are loopholes which can get App makers information even if you denied those permissions for instance if you denied an app to access your location the app can look through the MAC address from routers connected to your phone. Earlier such tricks were restricted to XDA modded ROMS but now it will come as a stock feature. Although Google did introduce MAC Randomizer in Android Pie aswell.

Data saved in external storage helps keep your private and sensitive information away from the hands of hackers and apps. Some apps determine user’s location by looking through image metadata. When you take a picture while connected to your WiFi and GPS location turned on, your location, date and time will be saved in your picture’s information. This is image metadata or commonly known as Exif data. This can be used to determine your location even if you denied location access to your app but in Android 10 this can not happen as your data will be saved separately from the app. The app would be able to access only its own files and must use MediaStore to access shared media files and use the system file picker to access shared files in the new Downloads collection.

Preventing interruptions has been also the focus of Android 10. Apps that pop up on your whole screen from the background are very irritating and some times there are more important things than these apps so to prevent that there are restrictions which will limit these apps. It will not have any effect upon apps you opened intentionally.

Android 10 introduces new permissions which can grant apps your location when you are using them and after you have closed those apps or if they are running in the background you can turn off their access to your location.

Foldable phones have been tested and Android 10 promises continuity while folding and unfolding your device. This means even when you are watching a video, playing games or anything else, folding or unfolding the device will not affect the continuity of your experience.

5G Networks are on the verge of being publicly used by everyone although most of fame 5G recently got was from USA – China 5G War. Of course after its proper introduction we would need a software which supports 5G as it would be faster and will have less latency issues. Android 10 has already made adjustments and supports 5G. You can also use connectivity API to check if you have a metered connection or if you have high bandwidth.

Security in Android 10 has been improved. A few things to note are that your storage will always be encrypted. This way a user’s data will be more secure and to ensure efficiency Android 10 includes Adiantum. Adiantum is available to Android 9 and higher, It increases efficiency but on certain devices. TLS 1.3 is enabled by default which is a major revised version of previous TLS versions, It helps keep you, your data and the data you access more secure for you. Android 10 has refined its several security measures such as fingerprint and face recognition systems.

Usage Stats of Apps is accurately noted and monitored by Android 10 using Usage Stats when apps are used in split-screen or picture in picture mode. Also Android 10 correctly tracks instant app usage.

Android 10’s Bubble feature lets you do a wide variety of things. This is very similar to Facebook’s Chat Heads which help you chat with people conveniently. Google is supporting this idea and has labelled it as multitasking. You can close these by tapping on the side of the screen and open these by clicking on the Bubbles. This helps you to do anything while keeping up with people.

Dark Theme is a feature that is in Android 10 which can be used for better battery time and aesthetic preferences. This mode is available on Messenger, Twitter and other places too but the main difference is that in Android 10 you can have a custom Dark Theme. Which means you can customize and make your own Dark Theme enabling all your Apps to become ‘instantly’ dark.

Live Captions/Subtitles are one of the most impressive features Android 10 has to offer as it does not require an internet connection for this feature to work. It can transcribe text using device’s own speech recognition system and using Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). This feature automatically captions audios, videos or any media being played on the user’s device. Live caption will be available soon.

Gesture Navigation will help people to enjoy a game, video or anything because there will be no buttons on the screen. However this is what Android 10 does support but Android 10 does not force brands to use this. They can develop their own navigation systems if they want to or to keep three-button navigation. Many ROMs have already moved to gesture based navigation while Google introduced gestures for Chrome few months back.

Audio capture in Android 10 lets you capture audios from any other audio playing app using audio playback capture API known as AudioPlaybackCapture API. This API gives apps the ability to copy the audio being played by other apps. This feature is the analog of screen capture, but for audio. The primary use case is for streaming apps that want to capture the audio being played by games.

Live Streaming Games is also supported with the newer API introduced in Android 10.

OTA Updates in Android 10 will not be dependant on your carrier and will be sent directly to your phone just like you update apps from Google Play, enabling you to be always updated with the most updated security patches and ROM version.

Conclusion – Android 10

Android is improving and the improvements are generally in the right direction, as Android Pie had some great features Android 10 coming up to the expectations, although there are many features which you can find on the Official Android 10 Website which were left as the list goes on and on. Google has already launched some Apps which will be part of Android 10 once its launched, such as Focus Mode which allows to temporarily disable apps so you can focus and Sound Amplifier which requires a wired headphone Jack and I wonder who is going to be using that apart from Pixel users.
Let us know which feature you like the most and what are your thoughts about Android 10 in the comment section below.