Android M's Huge Changelog Includes at Least 50 New Features

About 10 are very important, while the rest are minor

Even tough at first glance you might think that Android M doesn't bring too many new features over the previous version of the operating system, when you actually install the developer preview, there's quite a lot to take in.

There are lots of changes that haven't been mentioned during Google's first keynote where Android M was announced, but luckily the search giant listed all the changes during the event.

Many of you who watched the keynote live already know about some of these new features like Doze, new volume controls, new settings theme and the brand-new drawer.

Others are specifically aimed at developers while some of the features that haven't been listed by Google are simply “hidden.” We've already talked about three of them in our previous article, so let's focus on what Google actually announced.

Since the changelog is huge, we will only talk about some of the most important and attach the full list at the end of the article.

Additional features might be introduced by the time it launches

So, Dozer is a new feature that's meant to optimize the battery consumption of your Android device. It can detect movement and can tell when you left your smartphone/tablet unattended.

If it detects that your device is in sleep mode, Android will “exponentially back off background activity, trading off a little bit of app freshness for longer battery life.” According to Google, Doze can improve battery life by 2x.

Then there's the simplified volume controls. Android M has three volume slides: ringtone, apps and alarms. You can set each of these three volume slides to minimum, maximum or vibration mode.

The new app drawer now looks like a vertical scrolling pane with apps and services arranged in alphabetical order. It's also worth mentioning that there's a search function above that you can use anytime you need to find something.

For the full list of new features and improvements make sure you check out the changelog attached below.

1. Work Contacts in personal contexts
2. Hotspot 2.0 R1
3. VPN apps in settings
4. Flex Storage
5. Duplex Printing
6. App Standy
7. Seamless certificate installation for Enterprise
8. Undo/Redo keyboard shortcuts
9. Do not Disturb automatic rules
10.Data Usage API for work profiles
11.Material design support library
12,Text selection actions
13.Improved text hyphenation & justification
14.Bluetooth SAP
15.Easy word selection and Floating clipboard toolbar
16.Android Pay
17.Voice Interation service
18.USB Type C charging
19.App link verification
20.Battery historian v2 
21.Simplified volume controls
22.Improved Bluetooth low energy scanning
23.Doze
24.Corporate owned single use device support
25.Do not disturb quick setting and repeat caller prioritization
26.Improved trusted face reliability
27.Fingerprint sensor support
28.Improved text layout performance
29.Alphabetic app list with search
30.Unified Google settings and device settings
31.Work status notification
32.MIDI support
33.5GHz Portable Wi-Fi hotspot
34.Bluetooth connectivity for device provisioning
35.Seven additional languages
36.Power improvements in Wi-Fi scanning
37.Data binding support library Beta
38.Setups wizard: IMAP sign-in
39.Delegated certificatie installation
40.Secure token strage APIs
41.Google Now Launcher app suggestions
42.New runtime permissions
43.Stylus support UI toolkit performance improvements
44.Chrome custom tabs
45.Auto backup for Apps
46.Unified app settings view UI toolkit
47.Contextual assist framework
48.Enterprise factory reset protection
49.Direct Share
50.BT 4.2