Android Q is coming, and while we’ve been getting regular Android Q betas over the last few months, at the Google I/O keynote, the company announced a bunch of amazing features that are now confirmed to be coming with the final release of Android Q. Here are all the Android Q features announced by Google at I/O 2019:
Starting off with the newer features that we didn’t get to see in the betas so far. Android Q will bring Live Caption to Android phones. This will enable captions in all videos you might watch on the platform, including web videos, which is just awesome. The feature can be enabled by pressing the volume rocker and tapping on the Live Caption button. The best part about this feature is that it works completely on-device, so none of your data is sent to the cloud. It’s also OS-wide, so it will work across all your apps.
Android Q will also bring smart reply across the OS, and it will work on all messaging apps, including secure messaging apps like Signal. With smart reply, you’ll be able to quickly reply to messages directly from the notification, thanks to Google’s AI and machine learning.
Dark Mode
Android Q will finally come with Dark Theme built-in, and users will be able to toggle it on or off using the Quick Settings tile, or by enabling Battery Saver. This is definitely a feature that stock Android users will appreciate, especially since most OEMs using custom Android skins have already implemented this on their devices.
Android Q is also very focused on location privacy, and will bring various controls to ensure that you’re in control of which apps are using your location, and how they’re using it.
Faster Security Updates
With Android Q, Google is also working towards ensuring that smartphones with Android Q get security updates faster and more seamlessly. With Android Q, users will be able to get security updates seamlessly, and install them without having to restart their smartphones.
Google announced Digital Wellbeing with Android Pie last year, and now, the company is adding Focus Mode to Android Q. With Focus Mode, users will be able to pick and choose distracting apps, and when they enable Focus Mode, these apps will be disabled on their phones. This is definitely something I can see being useful for me at work, to avoid looking at Instagram every now and then, while still being able to use WhatsApp to stay in touch with people that matter.
Other than that, Google has announced that the Android Q beta will be available on 21 devices from 12 different OEM partners. The full list of these OEM partners is as follows:
