Top ten new features of Android 8.0 Oreo

In this article, I will be discussing the top ten new features of Android O version 8.0.0. I will be showing you screenshots of the new features and whenever possible comparing them to screenshots from an earlier version of Android to better illustrate the features of the new operating system.

1.       The settings menu has changed quite a bit, the first thing you will notice is they flipped the color and text in the settings shade and menu. You will also notice there are quite a few new options in the settings menu.

Old Shade and settings menu:

New Android Oreo shade and settings menu:

2.       Turns on wifi automatically. If you pay for data by the gig your going to love this new feature.  Sometimes when the wifi is spotty I’ll turn off my wifi antenna so my phone switches to LTE, however I almost never remember to turn the wifi back on resulting in large data charges. Now with Android 8.0 it will automatically turn back on your wifi.

WIFI options on old Android:

WIFI options on Android 8.0:

3.       Better storage control with app organization. On older versions of Android you could see how much space was being used by apps and other types of media that gives you a fair idea of how your using your storage, but apps is a pretty large category. In the new Android they break apps into several categories including games, movie and TV apps, and other apps.

Storage control on older version of Android:

Storage control on Android 8.0:

4.       Picture in picture. This is a completely new feature that has never been on any version of Android before. It allows you to use picture in picture so you can watch video as you use other apps, if the second picture is in the way simply drag it to a better place on your display.

Picture in picture on Android 8.0:

5.       Battery information and power saving options. The new Android 8.0 gives you detailed battery information and battery saving options. Giving  you far more control over your battery usage.

Traditional Android battery options:

Battery options with Android 8.0:

6.       On body detection. This is another completely new feature on Android 8.0. On body detection allows your phone to sense when it’s in your possession and stay unlocked for ease of use. When you set it down for a second it will automatically lock.

Smart lock on body detection on Android 8.0: 

7.       Adaptive icons. One cool new feature is adaptive icons, this will allow you to uniformly change the shape of all your icons, which is nice if you want your phone to look neat and organized.

Adaptive icons menu and example for Android 8.0:

8.       Snooze notifications. Android 8.0 lets you snooze notifications, simply swipe the notification half away and your snooze notification options will pop up.

Snooze notifications on Android 8.0:

9.       High performance Bluetooth and codec selection. Android 8.0 gives you complete control of your Bluetooth by allowing you to select the actual codec your Bluetooth is using for each connection.

Bluetooth options on older Android OS: 

Bluetooth codec options on Android 8.0:

10.   Emojis. One cosmetic feature that has changed is Emojis. Android traditionally have lumps for their emojis rather than the circle faces that iOS favors. Until Android 8.0 now everyone has round faces for their emojis.

Emojis on older Android:

Emojis on Android 8.0:

How to create backups in windows 10

The first step to backing up a windows 10 system is to decide what type of media to store the system image on.  You have a handful of options including DVD, cloud storage or a portable hard drive. I recommend a portable hard drive because you can rewrite over and over on it and more importantly it give you a physical copy that you can store in a safe location. If you are buying a new hard drive for this project I recommend getting at least a terabyte drive. Prices are always dropping on storage and you can now get terabyte portable drives for right around $50 on amazon.

Once you have your drive you must plug it in to your computer. Now with your drive connected you want to open control panel by clicking on start and typing “control”. When faced with the control panel options you want to select “Systems and security”

This will lead you to system and security settings. You will see several options, but you want to select “backup and restore (windows7)”

Next you want to click on “create a system image” on the upper left side of the page.

Here you will be prompted to select where you want to back up the system image to. First you want to select the “on a hard disk” radio button. Next from the pull down menu select your portable hard from the list of drives. Once the correct drive is selected click “next”

Now you will be asked to select which drives you want to back up, depending on your use case you might only want to select certain drives. I always recommend backing up everything especially if you’re sitting on a terabyte drive. Once you have made your selections click “next”

Now you see a screen showing you your settings, read it through to verify that you have all the options set correctly. Once satisfied click “start backup”

This may take a while to run so I suggest continuing working on other things while it runs.  A pretty cool feature known as shadow copy allows you to be working on open files as they are being backed up. This is very useful because it doesn’t leave you handicapped as you system creates a backup

Once windows is done backing up your system you are pretty much done! However, you will be asked if you want to create a system repair disk. If you don’t have one you might as well make one at this point, you just never know when it might come in handy. If you choose to do this simple select yes and either insert a blank DVD or create as an iso

Lastly remove your portable hard drive and your system repair disk. Make sure to store these somewhere safe, ideally somewhere that is not where you store your computer.  Keeping these copies in a safe place away from your computer gives you an extra level assurance. This way if something terrible like a fire destroys your computer you will still have a backup of your system. It’s the tech equivalent of not keeping all of your eggs in one basket.