List of some cool new features that Google is working on and will probably launch in android Q (the next version of Android).
System-wide dark theme
Google is also working on (almost done?) having dark theme in all their popular first party apps. It's not known yet if enabling dark theme in Android also turns it on inside apps though. Google is however working on a setting for forcefully applying a dark theme to apps which doesn't have it natively, though the results are right now kind of mixed with some apps breaking a bit.
The dark theme can be scheduled to automatically apply at certain times a day, always, or never.
Update to permissions
Android will get even more granular permissions. For example, it will be possible to restrict individual apps to only be able to access location information while the app is in use. Other than that not much seems to have changed on a technical level. Cosmetic changes to the app page including a quick way to filter which applications has access to a certain permission has been added though (for example you can see a list of which apps has access to your contacts, or location information). You can also see an average of how many notifications a certain app sends.
Desktop mode
Not much info is out yet, but it will most likely work like Samsung DeX. You connect a USB-C docking station, plug in a monitor along with a mouse/keyboard and you'll probably be able to run Android apps in individual windows.
Screen recording
Not much to say, other than an early build of Android Q includes a built in way of recording your screen.
APEX
In simple terms, further separate the OEM portion of Android from the core Android code, making it possible to update parts of Android without messing with OEM code(and thus, possibly be able to update more parts of Android without the OEMs having to do any modifications).
In a bit more technical terms...
Right now a large part of Android, its runtimes and frameworks are stored in a read only system partition. It seems like Google has taken inspiration of how Magisk works and implemented that into AOSP. What it does is save these packages inside a folder called /apex/, and during boot everything in that folder gets mounted into /system/, instead of actually being saved there permanently (if the files has valid and trusted digital signatures).
What this means is that Google should be able to make updates to their packages independently of other OEMs, thus allowing for even greater changes to Android without OEM interference than they can do today.
It also means that vendor specific packages (such as Samsung's skin) would potentially be removed and/or replaced with much greater ease as well. Just replace the package with something else (which is signed, but that should be possible to do with root access). Although, it is entirely possible that OEMs will try and combat this by ignoring using it, or implementing other checks to avoid having their stuff removed. Hopefully Google will make it mandatory like they did with Treble.
This is similar to how more ttraditional GNU/Linux distros such as Ubuntu functions (for example GNOME being a separate package which can be updated individually from the kernel, and vice versa).
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I haven't seen anyone use it either, but I think it's an interesting concept that could go somewhere in the future.
I don't think businesses will move to it (too much legacy stuff) but I think home users will move away from desktop and laptop computers. Plugging your phone into a large screen with mouse and keyboard could push a lot of users over that bump of replacing their pc.
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Personally looking forward to see what their system wide dark theme looks like. Could save me the trouble of having to customize every instance I run in to anything google.
Permissions should have been taken much more seriously long ago; and even with this, if it were to come to pass in the most idyllic sense, google would still harvest the daylights out of everything. I still get offended any time I checkout the processes running and am taken aback by how superfluous and insidious even stock android is. Makes me miss blackberry having an OS out there as an option between the great wall of ios and android whoresville. Lament windows mobiles absence less and less the more I experience Win10 though.
Desktop mode and screen capture might've been more interesting if I were remotely interested in a powerful android tablet. However, since the ones that exist are very inferior to competitors in just about every way, especially software wise; I just can't bring myself to think of an instance I'd care for either of those 2 features. To be frank I would have assumed they were already a thing. Could have sworn casting and or chrome browser kinda, sorta, did the desktop mode thing before.
Apex is interesting enough. I'd say security wise, but its more the devil you know than anything else. I do not have a lot of faith in googles software. They rarely follow through, and can't remember an instance where I got the impression that a perfectionist had any hand in development. Aside from data raping anyways.
ThX for the synopsis @LAwLz
