Despite all the announcements made at Google I/O for the new Android M OS , Google left out a set of updates that may be slightly more crucial to some people. With the developer preview of Android M now available to those with Nexus devices, some of the new features we saw are interesting.
However, one big thing that will affect every Android phone buyer in India is the new handling of microSD storage. With Android M, all new handsets will have the ability to turn microSD card storage into system memory. This is a very big deal, especially because it will make buying a larger capacity smartphone redundant. Companies often charge premiums for higher capacity variants of the same hardware, differentiating them only on the inbuilt storage.
Sources tell us that Samsung intentionally left out microSD card storage from the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge to earn premiums on higher capacities. They also did this because they were aware of this feature being launched in the next update of Google’s Android operating system. If Samsung had given the ability to install a microSD on the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, after the launch of Android M and Samsung’s update, it would have meant either lower earnings on the higher storage variants or a halt in sale all together as people would get the cheapest and then install a microSD.
Here are the other hidden features of Android M:
- Uninstall apps using the Google Now Launcher. Long tap any app and drag up and right.
- Head over to Settings > Device > Apps > Advanced > Memory to visit the RAM Manager. This feature lets you seethe performance of each App on your device per the RAM available on the handset. This nifty feature also allows you to kill Apps that consume too much memory.
- Support for MIDI devices: a feature that budding musicians have had on the iOS devices for a while now comes to Android and will allow you to attach Keyboards and DJ decks that support MIDI connections.
- USB OTG is also standard, and all devices with Android M will support USB OTG. This mixed with the new microSD management will essentially end the high price variant devices.
- Multi-window support can also be enabled by going through a slightly back end process.
- Hotspot 2.0 allows you to create Wireless Hotspots on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.
- Swiping from the bottom left to right on the Lock Screen will now launch Google Now Voice search vs the dialer in Android Lollipop.
- The new Doze feature is highly customisable and can be turned on or off on a per app basis. Allowing you to save battery on the usage of apps you do not need in the background.
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