ISSUE 67 • ANDROID ADVISOR 5ANDROID 10Android 10 is the seventeenth version of Android,
but we’re not here to nitpick the name. Google’s latest
mobile operating system is available now for every
Pixel phone including 2016’s first generation. The firm
promised two years of OS updates for that phone,
so it has outdone itself. But has it outdone itself with
the first version of Android not to bear the name of a
dessert? Is the new gesture system finally decent? Is a
system-wide dark mode really what everyone needs?
What’snew?
- Updatedsystemfontsandaesthetic
- System-widedarkmode
- iPhoneX-likenavigationgestures
- Evenmoregranularnotificationcontrol
- Enhancedpermissioncontrol
- Beta version of Focus Mode to quieten apps
Perhaps the biggest question is if the effort is
in vain for Google. The OS is such a fragmented
ecosystem that only a tiny global percentage of
Android phones will get Android 10 in the next six
months, if ever. Even flagship Samsung phones take
about that long to get it and even then, it’s with a
heavy UI skin over the top.
Google has pushed forward with some clever new
ideas, but in context not many people will see the
immediate benefit unless they own a Pixel. On the flip
side, millions more iPhones will have had iOS 13 soon
as it rolled out all the way back to the iPhone 6s.
We’ve been running Android 10 on a Pixel 2 XL
having played with various beta versions prior to that.