As everyone expected, Android M was officially unveiled at the annual Google I/O conference today, where the company promised hundreds of new features for the next version of its mobile operating system. Confirming previous rumors, the company revealed that Android’s app permission system is being reworked to give users more control of the data they’re sharing with apps. That’s just one of the many things that Google is changing up and improving with Android M, but there’s simply too much to put into a single article.
At it’s annual developer conference, Google just unveiled its next major version of Android: Android M. They’ll likely announce the full name when it gets closer to its official launch date. Today, they’re just showing us a developer preview. Google says that there are hundreds of new features coming in the next version of Android, but we only got a small taste of them on stage. Making app permissions easier to understand seems to be a big focus in Android M. Google’s vice president of engineering Dave Burke says that smartphone users will no longer have to agree to permissions they don’t want to. And, Android apps will condense permissions down to the ones that are most crucial, such as your phone’s camera and the microphone. Permissions are terms that you agree to when you download an app. They allow apps to access certain parts of your phone, like the camera, microphone, your contacts, and so on. An improved version of Google Now, called Google On Tap, is also launching in Android M. It allows you to ask Google questions while you’re in an app so that you don’t have to interrupt what you’re doing. Google showed an example on stage: while listening to Skrillex, they asked what Skrillex’s real name is without exiting the music player.
