Google released the developer version of Android Oreo 8.1 last month. With few weeks in beta, some hidden features are being discovered by developers. The latest discovery reveals a feature, which could help save space on your Android smartphones. Storage has been one major problem on smartphones especially with apps hogging space running in the background. Not only does this take up space, it also makes the smartphone slow or freeze while using it.
First reported by XDA Developers, a post on Android Open Source Project explains this space-saving feature that essentially works by downgrading inactive apps. According to the post, this feature will work when the smartphone is running low on space. Here, active apps are distinguished as those which were active in foreground and background, and also on other packages. As for inactive apps, the number of days till which it will be considered inactive will be determined by a system operator (sysop).
If these inactive apps are used again, then the system will run the same procedure again. Only those apps which are inactive will be targeted with this feature. It would take time before this feature lands up on devices as Android 8.0 Oreo is only starting to run on smartphones. As with most OS features, OEMs will have to manually enable this feature for their smartphones. Google is expected to release the stable version of Android 8.1 Oreo sometime in December.
Recently, it was discovered that Google is testing an SMS feature for Chromebooks and Pixel 2 smartphones. This allows Pixel 2 users to read and reply to SMSs on their Chromebook. However, it isn’t known if Google will release this feature with the stable build. Android 8.1 Oreo update also enables the Pixel Visual co-processor on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. More features discovered include managing wallpaper colors, better performance for low-RAM devices when running Android apps, among others.