Android

The First Look Of Android 12 Is Here

Android 12

The development work on Android 12 has already been started, the next major update to Google’s operating system is Android 12, continues away from the spotlight. Now we are about to enter the heart of a period that could be the right one for the release of the first Developer Preview, given that last year, the Android 11 Developer Preview arrived at the end of February.

Meanwhile, the XDA community provides interesting advances on the features of the awaited new version of Android, taken from the documentation that Google provides to its partners. The central element of the rumours listed below is embodied in a series of screenshots that reveal some details of the new interface.

Notification Panel

The first immediately evident element concerns the new aspect of the notification panel , which highlights the following peculiarities:

  • The transparent background of the current Android version has been replaced by an opaque background. In the image, it is grey/beige but it is likely that it can change according to the theme and the activation (or not) of the dark mode;
  • there is always the separation between the quick settings and the section that reports the notifications of conversations; the latter is enclosed in elements with even more rounded corners;
  • the number of quick settings has been reduced from 6 to 4, consequently, the icons are larger;
  • the position of the date and clock has been reversed (the first is above, the time below);
  • In the top right corner, you can find an indicator that tells you if an app is accessing the camera and microphone.

Privacy

New settings / privacy features :

  • The first novelty is linked to the aforementioned indicator that signals access to the camera/microphone by an app: a tap on the indicator calls up a pop-up panel with details on which app has access to these functions and allows you to intervene to block it; according to what emerged from the documentation, Google will make it mandatory to insert this indicator in Android 12 (that is to say that all partners who want to use Android 12 must provide for the support of this function);
  • In the privacy settings section, there are two toggles to completely disable access to the camera and microphone. For the sake of completeness, remember that on Android 11 it is already possible to disable all the sensors of the device through the quick setting “sensor off “, which is displayed only after activating the developer options. With the next version of Android, the setting to turn off the camera/microphone will be even easier to spot

Widget Conversations

The latest news spotted in the documentation concerns the new conversations widget that contains recent messages, missed calls and activities related to the user’s status. From the images taken from the documentation it seems that the size of the widget is such as to allow the display of only one message at a time (e.g. a single message or a single missed call notification), but please note that these are functions under development which may vary in the final version of the operating system. A tap on the widget allows you to access “People Shortcuts” a section containing avatar, name, notifications and status information of a particular contact. Even the presence of the conversations widget seems to become a mandatory feature of Android 12.
February 9, 2021