While some of us may have seen large parts of Nougat already, we’ll be approaching this Android 7.0 review from the perspective of a new user – someone who hasn’t “seen it all before”. We want to provide a sweeping overview of Android 7.0 features, but we’ll also draw comparisons to Marshmallow where relevant and provide context with discussion of features that appeared in the pre-release versions of Android N but that didn’t quite make it to the final version.
Quick Reply is simply the ability to reply to a message directly from its notification without having to open the app fully. It’s a fantastic feature and one that will save you a lot of time and endless app switching.
If I had to sum Android Nougat up in a nutshell, I’d say that it’s Android putting its roots down. The general feel of Android has become increasingly stable since Lollipop, with less feature flip flopping, fewer performance issues and a greater focus on polish. Nougat is all about extending functionality, improving pre-existing features and further expanding what’s possible in stock Android.
As you know, Marshmallow largely maintained the overall look of Lollipop but baked in some big new features like Doze Mode, the fingerprint API and granular permissions. One year on and Nougat follows suit, maintaining the home screen and app drawer design of Marshmallow, but digging even deeper, laying the fundamental groundwork for what is yet to come.
There are some new visual features to be sure, with a redesigned Settings menu and notifications area. But there’s also a lot more enhanced functionality and exciting background stuff going on in Nougat than you see on the surface.
Split-screen mode: how it works
Nougat finally delivers split-screen mode to stock Android, a feature that has been around in manufacturer skins and custom ROMs since forever. Android Nougat’s built-in version is in some ways better than what we’ve seen before, but it can also be a little… over the top. Now, take a deep breath as I walk you through how it all works.
Split-screen works in both portrait and landscape mode, with the two ‘windows’ only being resizable in portrait mode. App developers can set their own minimum app height, but in landscape mode you’re stuck with a 50/50 width split, which actually makes sense.
Split-screen mode can be activated by long-pressing the app overview/recent apps button while in an app proper. It can also be activated by long-pressing an app preview card in the app picker and dragging it to the top of the screen. You can even enable a gesture action so it launches when you swipe up on the overview button. So far, so many options.
That first app will then appear in the top window (or on the left if you’re in landscape mode) and you’ll be able to choose your second app from the app picker which displays automatically. Or, when the app picker is displayed in the secondary window, you can tap Home to launch an app from your home screen or open the app drawer.
Think of it like this: the app up top (or on the left in landscape mode) is the primary app, the other app is secondary and it is the one that can be changed easily. With this in mind, you’ll always want to start multi-window mode with the app you’re less likely to want to change.
Quick switching apps
Quick switching is basically just shuffling between the two most recently used apps. It works system-wide, so you can quick switch whenever you’re in a full-screen app and you can also use it in the secondary window of split-screen mode.
Simply double tap the app overview button and you’ll switch between your two most recent apps in your secondary window. (The same gesture flips between full-screen apps when not in split-screen mode.)
The presence of the quick switching action – possibly my favorite Nougat feature of all – thus means you can triple task in multi-window mode. For example, you can be watching a YouTube video in the top window and quick switch between two social feeds in the bottom. Or you can be composing an email in the top pane while simultaneously switching between a note app and a web page in the bottom window. It’s actually pretty awesome
Working with split-screen mode
Speaking of writing, multi-window mode is pretty smart when it comes to the keyboard. If you have two evenly-spaced windows up and need to type into one (say, a URL or search term), the windows will automatically resize to accommodate the keyboard and then automatically switch back when the keyboard is off screen again. You can also cleanly drag and drop text between the two windows although this doesn’t work with every app.
Exiting split-screen mode is quite intuitive also: just drag the black divider all the way up to go full screen with the app on the bottom or drag all the way down for the app on the top. Alternatively, you can long-press the app overview button again and your primary app will go full screen.
Hitting the Home button while in split screen mode pushes your apps off screen but you’ll always know you’ve got split-screen mode activated because your status bar will retain the color of the primary app and the overview button will change to a split-screen icon. Double tapping the overview button will return you to your current split-screen setup while tapping it once will bring back your primary app and replace the secondary app with the app picker.
BETTER
Not everything in Nougat is so convoluted though. Some features are plain, simple and intuitive. From new feature additions to tweaks on Marshmallow staples, Nougat does a lot of things better than its predecessor.
Notifications: redesigned, bundled and Quick Reply-able
The notifications area in Nougat has received a slight makeover, doing away with the Google Now-esque cards from Marshmallow and going super flat and full-width. You get more information and less wasted space in them too, which is exactly what you want from a notification. Likewise, bundled notifications and Quick Reply are so obvious and so useful it’s surprising they haven’t appeared in stock Android until now.
There are basically three views to Nougat notifications: the super-compact lock screen view, the slightly-more-information notifications shade view, and the expanded view with ‘quick actions’, which you access by swiping down on a notification or by tapping the top part of the notification itself. Quick actions are what I’m calling Nougat’s sexy new Quick Reply feature and other similar functions.
But quick actions go beyond just replying: you can also share, delete, archive and more directly from a notification. These actions make Nougat’s notifications area a much more active and responsive place. But again, not all apps support this functionality yet either.
Notification prioritization
You can still swipe to dismiss notifications and tell Android how much notification information to display on the lock screen in the Notifications area of the Settings (Sounds also has its own dedicated section in Nougat). But you can also long-press a notification to access its priority settings or swipe it a little to the side and tap the gear icon to access your options.
The choices are simple: show notifications silently; block all notifications; don’t silence or block. You can also enter the full app settings page where you have even more control, including whitelisting the app to notify you even when Do Not Disturb mode is on (but more on that later).
Multiple notifications from the same app will now get bundled together too, saving more space and allowing you to dismiss them en masse or expand them for individual attention.
System UI Tuner is back
For those of you that preferred the ‘sliding scale’ for setting the importance of app notifications from the developer previews, you can easily enable it in System UI Tuner via Power notification controls.
To add System UI Tuner to your Settings menu, just tap and hold the gear icon in the Quick Settings until it spins and your device vibrates. You’ll now find it at the bottom of the Settings menu. System UI Tuner also contains the toggle for the split-screen swipe-up gesture and toggles for which icons are visible in the status bar. You also find some Do Not Disturb options there.
Customizable Quick Settings
Quick Settings in Nougat have also been updated. For starters, you’ll now always have a handy list of five toggles at the top of your notifications shade. You can edit the order of this list to make sure only the most important shortcuts for you are present. The small arrow on the right hand side will take you to the full Quick Settings page, which you can also access with the familiar two-finger swipe-down gesture from the top of the screen.
You can now have multiple pages of tiles too. Some of them instantly toggle a setting on or off, like the flashlight, Do Not Disturb mode and Location. Other tiles, like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, can be tapped to access a mini menu right in the Quick Settings.
The ability to turn Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off must now be done from the mini-menu, even after the uproar about removing the tap-to-toggle functionality in the developer previews. Fortunately though, you can toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on or off via the ever-present Quick Settings toggles at the top of the notifications shade. Long-pressing a tile will take you to its full Settings menu screen.
In the full Quick Settings list you can also tap the Edit button at the bottom right to rearrange the tiles or replace them with others. The optional extras list is pretty minimal: just Cast, Data Saver, Invert colors and Hotspot. But developers are now able to create custom Quick Settings tiles for their apps, which will definitely make things a lot more interesting in the coming months.
Doze Mode on the Go
Some of you might remember how happy I was when the battery shortcut appeared in the developer previews, which meant a long-press on the battery icon would instantly take you to the full battery section in Settings. That’s here and I’m happy. But that’s not the most exciting battery feature in Nougat by a long shot.
Doze Mode has now been beefed up to work not only when the device is stationary for a while but also when it is in motion. Your screen needs to be off, obviously, but you’ll now get to enjoy varying degrees of Doze whenever your phone isn’t being used. It’s a little too early to say just how much better Doze is in Nougat, but the expanded functionality alone is appreciated.
The new two-layer system essentially means that a phone left in your pocket or bag while you’re on the move will shut down network access and only periodically sync data and run tasks. When a device is completely stationary for a while, it will slip into an even deeper hibernation, with no syncing, deferred jobs, no wakelocks and no GPS or Wi-Fi scanning. In this mode, the maintenance windows are even further spread out.
FASTER
Android Nougat isn’t just about making things better or more complex though. A lot of work has been put into speeding Android up, a far greater project you can see Google-wide, from Chrome optimization and Accelerated Mobile Pages to Google Fiber and the Wing drone delivery project.
New Settings menu
The Settings menu has been reconfigured in Android 7.0, with the two primary changes being the addition of a hamburger menu on the left and the presence of high-order information under each Settings section title. The first of these is going to be very familiar: it’s the same mechanism you’re used to for accessing Google Now and the navigation drawer in many Google apps.
Although you can access it anytime, once you’re in a sub-menu in Settings you’ll see the hamburger menu icon at the top left, which replaces the need for the back button. Tap it (or swipe from the left edge) and you can jump to any other part of the Settings menu instantly without having to repeatedly tap the back arrow.
Even when you can’t see the icon, like in the Advanced Wi-Fi Settings or on the main Settings page, you can still swipe it out. It’s a handy ‘quick escape’ feature even if it’s not likely to be used by many people. Like a lot of new features in Android 7.0 you can use it if you want to, but if not, you won’t even notice it’s there.
The best part of the new Settings menu though is that the essential information contained in each Settings section is now displayed right there on the main page. You’ll instantly know which Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth device you’re connected to, how many apps you have installed, how much storage you’ve used and how much longer your battery is expected to last. It’s a small addition perhaps, but another massive time saver.
There’s a new Suggestions area at the top of the Settings menu, where you’ll intermittently see suggestions from the Android system about a variety of things. From reminding you to use voice search, register a fingerprint, add email accounts or change your wallpaper, you can act on them or minimize and ignore them at will. If you want to get rid of the section entirely, just tap the overflow menu and remove all Suggestions.
When you’ve got Do Not Disturb mode (or several other settings like Flight Mode) enabled, you’ll also see a persistent reminder at the top of your Settings menu where you can also turn it off. The built-in file manager – found in Storage > Explore – has been slightly rejigged too, using a tiled layout now instead of the list view you got in Marshmallow.
In Nougat, when you go to the App Info page for apps you’ve installed yourself you’ll now be able to see whether they came from Google Play or were side-loaded. This probably won’t matter to most folks, but it will help if you’re wondering why an app hasn’t been updated recently or if you’re troubleshooting something.
Sounds and Notifications now have their own dedicated Settings areas and you can set your phone to Total Silence via the Do Not Disturb toggle in Quick Settings (but not via the volume button).
Do Not Disturb
Do Not Disturb has been one of the most complicated implementations of any Android feature in recent memory. If nothing else, continued exposure to it means the basic idea has probably slowly started to sink in by now though. If you can wrap your head around it, it can actually save you a lot of time and effort when you don’t want to be interrupted.
The Do Not Disturb settings allow you to choose from Total Silence, Alarms Only and Priority Only. You can set exceptions for Priority Only mode to allow certain notifications in, enable Do Not Disturb mode for a set period of time or indefinitely, create automatic rules for the weekend, evenings or work hours and also block visual disturbances like LED notifications or on-screen pop-ups.
Seamless updates
Speaking of updates, Android Nougat is also introducing the concept ofseamless updates, which essentially means new Android updates will be downloaded in the background and stored on a different system partition. It’s the same approach to upgrading that Chromebooks take.
Once an update has been downloaded in the background, the next time you restart your phone, the system will switch partitions and you’ll instantly have the new Android updates without having to go through the usual download, reboot and install process.
Unfortunately, the 2016 Nexuses will be the first devices to receive these seamless updates though. That means you won’t get them on any current device, including the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X.
Maintenance updates and the beta program
For those of you on the Android N beta program, you might want to stay on it even now that Nougat is officially out. Google has announced that regular Maintenance Release (MR) updates will be rolling out in pre-release form to those on the beta program. The pre-release MRs will bring “continued refinements and polish,” but also deliver bug fixes and feature tweaks before everyone else gets them.
As with all beta releases though, these might also be less stable than the regular updates everyone else will get. If you’re the type that simply must have the latest and greatest as soon as possible and are willing to suffer the occasional bug to get them, then the beta program is for you. Everyone else can just sit tight and wait for the regular public releases to roll out.
Camera shortcuts
The update to the Google Camera that comes with Nougat on Nexus devices also adds a new twist gesture to switch between front and back cameras. Unlike on Moto devices, it can’t be used to launch the camera so it only works when the camera app is already open.
Fortunately, the outstandingly handy power button shortcut returns, so all you need to do to instantly launch the camera is double press the power button. You may need to enable this feature in the Display settings first though.
STRONGER
No Android update would be complete without security improvements either. Android 7.0 has a lot of stuff going on, from hardening the media stack so as to deny future Stagefright-style media library privilege escalations, to simply letting you know from where an app was installed. But Nougat also has a few safety-minded features as well as serious security advancements.
WRAP UP
If you’ve made it this far then you’ll be painfully aware of just how few sexy and exciting “general audience” features Android Nougat has and just how many boring but ultimately more-useful-for-everyone nerd-features it packs in instead. There is a lot of customization potential in stock Android now, more than there has ever been before, but it is perhaps wisely kept out of mainstream view.
Nougat adds some great features, the kind of stuff we used to have to turn to custom ROMs, manufacturer skins or third-party apps to get. But most of these will only really ever be used by advanced users – either because they are too complicated for the ‘average user’ or because most people will never even realize they even exist.
This is perhaps, the best way to sum up Android 7.0 Nougat. It’s an Android version for Android fans. It does the basics well and without much fuss for everyone, but for those of us willing to dig around or with an eye on the future, there’s plenty to keep us busy. It’s remarkably stable with only a few inconsistencies and bugs: certainly the fewest I’ve ever seen on a new Android version.
But while it may be harder, better, faster, stronger for the Nexus master race, for the vast majority of Android users, the most important Nougat feature will be how well it works if or when they ever actually get it on their device.
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