Google will soon release Android 14. The all-new update promises improvements in areas such as privacy, security, and performance.

Android 14 is still in beta for Google Pixel smartphones. This means that Pixel users can already download the new upgrade and see what has changed. The final version will probably be available on your smartphone at the end of summer. We will go through all the features that distinguish us.

Android 14: These are the 5 new features you can expect

Note: The features discussed are published by Google developers. It remains to be seen if they will also return in the final version. M

#1 Battery saver on Android 14

Android 14 introduces some new tweaks in an effort to improve battery life. You shouldn’t expect much progress, but new features will bring significant savings.

For example, Google has made changes to how the operating system handles background tasks, downloads, and uploads. You can also track battery consumption more easily. Looks like the “Screen time since last full charge” option is about to come back. The functionality disappeared in Android 12 and gave you the opportunity to estimate how long your smartphone will take to charge.

#2 More emphasis on privacy

Since malware usually targets older versions of Android, Android 14 will not allow you to install apps older than Android 5.1 and below.

There are a few other tweaks working behind the scenes to improve security, but perhaps the most notable is that it makes it incredibly easy to revoke permissions from apps. As a result, information about your location, contacts or photos, for example, is no longer available. In this way, Google hopes to better protect you from unsafe third-party apps or ads.

#3 Bigger fonts and smarter expansion

Switching to a larger font in Android 13 was limited to 130 percent. Google is expanding this up to 200 percent with Android 14. To avoid shaky layouts, the system uses a non-linear scale. This means that words that are already large in a “normal” font size, such as subheadings and headings, will not even be capitalized. This keeps the text legible

#4 Better support for large screens

The first thing Google announced in the preview for Android 14 is additional support for apps that want to adapt to different screen sizes. As more tools become available to developers, we can expect apps to work well on smartphones, foldable phones, and tablets.

#5 Satellite connection on Android?

Smartphone satellite communication has been rumored for a while, especially since Apple launched “Emergency SOS via satellite” for the iPhone 14 last year. This feature was confirmed in the tweet below by Google’s Senior Vice President of Android, Hiroshi Lockheimer.

What exactly this will mean is still unclear. It may be easier to send (emergency) messages in places where there is bad connectivity.

It’s hard to think of user experiences for phones that can connect to satellites. When we launched the G1 in 2008, getting 3G + Wifi was a stretch. We are now designing for satellites. amazing! Excited to support our partners in enabling all of this in the next version of Android!

– Hiroshi Lockheimer (Lockheimer) September 1, 2022

Google consumes battery power on Android, but it’s easy to fix