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The next version of Android is expected to help prevent your phone from dying too soon: It will save your battery by putting greater limits on what your apps can do while they're not being used, according to a post on Google’s Android Developer Blog.
The potential changes here are interesting because Android is the most widely used phone operating system in the world, with 88 percent of smartphone market share as of November, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
In addition to battery life, Android O is expected to have simplified app notification settings and the ability to allow picture-in-picture display, so users can do things like respond to texts while watching videos in YouTube without having to close the video window.
Something that’s not changing: As with previous updates to Android, no one knows what fraction of Android users will get the update. Android might be the most common mobile phone operating system, but pushing out updates to users is often up to carriers and manufacturers, not Google.
According to Android’s developer site, a mere 3 percent of Android users have Nougat, which is the latest version now available. By contrast, 79 percent of iOS users are currently on the latest version of iPhone software, iOS 10.
The preview of Android O is intended to solicit feedback from developers, according to Google. A lot may change before the consumer version is released, and the company won’t tell us when that may be.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
