Android N Developer Preview

The newest version of Android has arrived even earlier than you would expect: welcome, Android N.

N, as in, 'No, even Google has not decided on the name of it just yet'. 

But first, you should know that this is not the final version of Android N: in fact, this is a Developer Preview, a version intended solely for developers and testers to check out on their devices and prepare future apps for the new features that Android N provides. At Google I/O 16, the company unveiled Developer Preview 3, the first beta-grade version of the platform ahead of the final release later this summer.

You can install this beta only on recent Nexus phones (Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player and Pixel C, specifically). So how do you get it? We manually flashed it on our Nexus 6, but the easier way to do it is to enroll in Google's Android Beta Program. Once you enroll, you will get the new Android N Developer Preview via an over-the-air (OTA) update. You can also easily revert to a public Android release without having to go through the hassle of manually flashing anything.

With all this in mind, let's start with the TL;DR: here's all the important new stuff in Android N:

1. Perfromance improvements with a new just-in-time (JIT) compiler that gets rid of super long 'Optimizing apps' screen at startup

2. New multitasking options: split-screen and picture-in-picture

3. New notificattion system with Quick Reply option

4. Quick Switch is like Alt+Tab: double tap the recents button to switch between the current and most recent apps

5. Quick Setting toggles

6. Subheadings for Settings that help you make more sense of them

7. Data Saver

8. Doze now works right after you lock your screen

9. Support for Unicode 9 emoji standard

10. Security-enhancements: file-level encryption and seamless updates