It took place in October 2015, but it is now installed on just over 2% of devices on this platform. As you know, updates here are not very fast.
Whether you have this system or not, you can learn something new about it from the tips below. Read them and teach your smartphone or tablet new skills. Note that the description refers to the pure version of the system, without shells from third-party companies, where the location of the settings may be different.
1. Make the most of Now on Tap
One of the most touted new features of the system is something called Now on Tap. This is a type of Google virtual assistant that gives contextual information about what is currently shown on the screen. To use, press and hold the Home button.Now on Tap can bring a lot of benefits, its capabilities are constantly increasing even after its release. When activated when the flight number is displayed on the screen (for example, in correspondence), Now on Tap will allow you to see the flight status without having to open another application. When activated, at the time the item number is displayed when purchasing in the online store, a description of the delivery process will be given.
Now on Tap can be used to obtain driving directions, addresses of organizations and street searches, obtain information about restaurants, and movie show times. It is only necessary that the required theme be launched on the device screen.
2. Disable Tap
Despite Now on Tap's potential, its usefulness is still limited. For some, it is not diverse enough to occupy a place in Home button, especially since in previous versions of Android, clicking on it opened Google Now.Luckily, Now on Tap is disabled. After that, pressing on Home will open Google Now. Open the operating system settings, Google Settings-> Search and Hints ->Now on Tap and toggle the slider. Then, if necessary, you can immediately turn the function back on.
3. Change the quick settings panel
It is possible to change what is displayed in the panel quick access icons - where shown Wi-Fi connections, Bluetooth, flashlight, airplane mode, etc. This is done in the System UI Tuner tool. Swipe from the top of the screen twice. Click and hold the gear icon at the top right, it will rotate and a message will appear indicating that System UI Tuner is available.
Open settings and at the very bottom of the list. The System UI Tuner option appeared there.
4. We continue tuning the system
If you are determined to continue making changes to the system, use a third-party app called Custom Quick Settings. It goes even deeper than Tuner, goes deep into the system and allows you to add various shortcuts to the settings panel.However, we warn you that this program does not have a very user-friendly interface. Work with her only if you are confident in your abilities and knowledge.
5. Turn up the volume
The volume in Android 5.0 was awkward to adjust, but in Marshmallow there are no problems with this. You can open all elements of the sound control system - for alarms and notifications, music, calls. They are accessible from anywhere in the system.
When you press the volume up or down button, the system opens the audio setting for the activity that is taking place in this moment. If audio is playing, the audio setting for it opens. If you want to change the sound elsewhere, use the down arrow to the right of the volume slider. More sliders will appear, giving you the ability to change the sound in other places.
6. Silence setting
Part of the redesigned volume control system is new mode"Do not disturb". When you need complete silence, tap on this option in quick settings. All sounds and vibrations will be turned off either permanently or temporarily. You can mute everything, leaving alarms or notifications from apps with priority.7. Easy to keep quiet
If you have no time to think about options and need to quickly turn off the device, press the volume button down, an icon will appear that only vibration works. Then release the button and press again.This puts Android into silent mode, in which only the alarm clock works. Android users Lollipop will appreciate the simplicity of this solution.
8. Automatically turn on silent mode
Save yourself an extra minute by setting the machine to silence in advance when you know you'll be busy.
Open Settings under Sounds & Notifications and tap Do Not Disturb. Here you can create different rules, specifying when the silent mode should automatically turn on, depending on the day and time, or the presence of certain tasks on the calendar.
9. Setting priorities
Not everyone wants to be distracted by every beep made by their smartphone, but you shouldn't miss important notifications. Android 6.0's notification priority system comes into play.Before you start using it, you need to complete the settings. Open Do Not Disturb in Sounds & Notifications again and tap the Important Only option.
A list of notification types is available here, you can set them high priority- reminders, events, specific calls and text messages. You can even allow calls from certain subscribers if they call a second time in 15 minutes.
Having configured everything as it should, activate the Only important mode, as stated in tip No. 6, and only events and people that are interesting to you will disturb you.
10. Control over notifications
To others disadvantage of Android 5.0 is an intrusive notification display (heads-up or peek). Large card-based notifications were updated in Android 5.1, but this was only an interim solution to the problem.
In Marshmallow, you can take control of notifications and set which apps can display them on the screen and which only in the status bar. Go to Settings Sounds & notifications -> Application notifications and select the application. A list of settings will appear where you can make notifications from this application important (will be shown when activated function“Do not disturb”) or prevent notifications from being shown on the screen.
11. Further customization of applications
Continuing with the theme of controlling apps, Android 6.0 makes them easier to see and gives you tabs of what they do. Open the Applications section in settings and select the one you need.Here you will see how much space the application takes up in memory and find out the types of data access permissions it has received. Use shown random access memory and battery, which will help you identify programs that are consuming resources too quickly (hint: keep an eye on Google Photos and Facebook).
12. Working with text
The text selection tool in the system has been simplified. It gives access to third party programs developers offering new features.In the spring, at Google I/O 2015, a new version of Android was announced, and from October 5, the stable version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow became available for the first devices, which included Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 7 2013, Nexus 9 and Nexus Player. Today we will talk in detail about the new operating system using an example Google smartphone Nexus 5.
Interface
After updating the operating system, the first thing that catches your eye is the new smartphone boot animation using the updated Google logo.
The initial setup of the smartphone has not undergone any changes. Everything is the same as on Lollipop.
Before getting acquainted with the interface, you should clarify one point. Google Start is used as a shell. Yes, this is still the same application that we remember from previous versions Android. Therefore, many will have a healthy question: why should I wait (want) to update to 6.0 if I have the same interface on my old Nexus 4 as on new devices. It just so happens that most of the changes are hidden inside and are not noticeable at first glance. We will talk about this in the article.
Let's start with changes to unlocking the device. Now the lower left icon is responsible for launching Google Now, and not the “dialer” as in previous version operating system. Yes, and now you have to pull the icons literally from the corner, it’s not as convenient as before. The font of the clock widget has changed, but if you don’t look closely, the changes are practically invisible.
The desktop remained completely unchanged. A new Google logo and a colored microphone are brought along with the new Google version Start. The only innovation is the ability to remove applications from the desktop, and not just a shortcut as before.
Changing the scroll orientation in the application menu also applies to Google Start. If earlier we flipped through the application tables from right to left, now from bottom to top. The application search bar will always remain at the top, below which will be the four most frequently launched applications. The order of the applications is simple - first those applications that begin with numbers, and then everything in alphabetical order. The first language will be the system language, and then English. If you click on the scroll slider located on the left side, the letters and the first applications for each of them will be highlighted.
By the way, vertical scrolling in the menu Google applications showed us during Android 1.X - 2.X. But it has nothing in common with the current version.
Finding apps is literally lightning fast. This is suitable for those who have many programs and games stored on their device. Now you don’t need to scroll through and carefully search for the application you need, but just enter the first letters, and it’s already found.
There have also been changes in animation. Now, after clicking on the screen, the application opens as if from it. When you hide an app, it moves down. When you go to an application from the task manager, it opens up. All animations are very smooth even on Nexus 5.
Separate volumes for multimedia, alarm and call returned, as well as the normal Do Not Disturb mode.
The “copy and paste” function has been slightly reworked. It contains a translator that can replace the text with the translated one, of course, if Google Translate is installed. Now, when you move the cursor to the right, entire words are selected, and if you need to select part of a word, then to do this you need to move the cursor to the left. Thanks to this, highlighting text has become easier and more convenient.
Google Now on Tap
Thanks to Google features Now on Tap makes it possible to search within a specific application. In practice this is a very useful thing.
Now you can search information directly from a web page, music player, Twitter, messages, mail and many other applications. To do this, you need to hold down the home key for a few seconds and Google Now on Tap will analyze the contents of the screen. It is important to remember that only the information that is in the active area of the screen is analyzed. The analysis itself is very fast, although it depends on the speed of the Internet connection.
Let's look at the example of searching Google Now on Tap while listening to music in a smartphone player. In the summary we will get a link to the song on YouTube, Google search, pictures, as well as links to the artist on YouTube and popular in social networks. As a result, this is a very convenient feature. The fly in the ointment will be its inaccessibility if the Russian language is selected on the phone. But with English language everything works great, even recognizes Cyrillic alphabet perfectly. We hope to see support for other languages coming soon.
Settings
Standard Android interface had only the most necessary settings. Now the situation has changed a little. We will talk about the new settings below.
If you click on the gear in the “Applications” settings item, you will be taken to the “Configure applications” menu. Here we will find a lot of interesting things. The most interesting items are “Application Permissions” and “Links in Applications”.
Let's start with the “Application Permissions” item. At this point, we determine which application to give access to SMS, calendar, camera, contacts, location, microphone, body sensors, memory, phone and other functions. Now when installing an application from Google Play You don’t have to agree to all the terms in one fell swoop. Everything will happen gradually. The first time you try to access data on the device, a request will be made and then you can either allow or deny it.
If we return to the main settings table, another interesting item has appeared there - “Storage and USB drive”. In this paragraph you can see the use of internal and external storage, be it a card microSD memory or a flash drive connected via OTG. Google has finally added a built-in file manager, but it can only move, delete and share files, but that's at least something.
There have also been changes in the “Battery” item.
The usage statistics from the moment of full charging displays not only the operating time, but also the estimated consumption in mAh.
It is now possible to configure applications so that they save battery. The so-called Doze mode. At the moment, by default, almost all applications are configured to save power, except for Google Play services, it is impossible to force them to save battery. Doze mode is necessary to increase time battery life phone in sleep mode. This is exactly what many people miss, because it often happens that up to 20% of the charge is lost overnight. Now the Nexus 5 easily fits into 1-2% of the discharge per night. You don’t need to turn off Wi-Fi or turn on airplane mode at all. Magic, and that's all.
RAM now has its own menu item – “Memory”. It now includes an estimate of available memory, total memory, average usage (as a percentage), free memory, and an analysis of memory usage by applications.
Usage analysis is displayed for the last 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours and 1 day. Applications are sorted by average memory used. When we go to the application we get Additional information about the frequency of use of the application, the maximum amount of RAM used, as well as about the system processes behind which the application is hidden.
Present and hidden settings– “System UI Tuner”. To activate them, you need to hold the gear in the curtain for a couple of seconds. As the greeting says: “System UI Tuner will allow you to customize Android devices according to your taste. This experimental feature may change, stop working, or disappear in the future." Well, interesting. The first menu item is called " Quick Settings" It changes the location of the labels in the curtain. In the next item “Status Bar” you can activate or deactivate notifications from the displayed applications. And, perhaps, one of the most necessary items is “Show battery charge level as a percentage.”
If we talk about hardware changes, now Android 6.0 Marshmallow supports USB 3.1 Type-C, the transfer speed of which can reach 10 Gbps, as well as a fingerprint scanner. But the new camera interface is currently only available on the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P.
conclusions
Android 6.0 Marshmallow is a real bug fix. Despite the fact that practically nothing has changed outwardly, everything has become much better. The smoothness of the interface has become simply unsurpassed; the same Nexus 5 on Lollipop and Marshmallow feels like two different phones. Autonomy has also increased, especially in sleep mode. There are some goodies in the form of Google Now on Tap, which you quickly get used to, as well as memory usage statistics and the ability to configure application permissions. Yes, there was a fly in the ointment. This time it was battery-eating Wi-Fi. But, despite this, even the old Nexus 5 can easily work for a day with 4 hours of active screen, and this is a significant increase in autonomy. So it turns out that there are a minimum of external differences, and in fact, the new operating system is simply a “must have”.
Everyone knows that the Android operating system is being developed by Google for smartphones and tablets. At the moment, this is the most popular platform for these devices. Official version Android may only run on supported devices with ARM architecture. But since Android is an open source project source code, the community has created a port of Android for x86 computers that will work on almost any modern computer.
The official version of Android 6.0 from Google was released quite a long time ago, but only a few days ago the developers released a stable version of the Android x86 port for version 6.0. In this article we will look at installing Android x86 6.0 on a computer or laptop. Perhaps the platform is not yet stable enough, but it can already be used and you will see it.
System requirements Android x86 6.0
Android x86 is quite demanding on hardware. Ideally, it should work on any computer with an x86 processor. But in reality it's not that simple. The developers tested the system on several devices, for example, laptops from ASUS, EeePC and Dell full list Supported devices and their level of support can be found on the official website.
As for equipment and characteristics, the following parameters are recommended:
- CPU: Intel;
- RAM: 2048 MB;
- Free disk space: 10 GB;
- USB flash drive- to record the installer.
Preparing for installation
Just like for others operating systems first we need to download the installation media. You can download the latest version of the system from the repository on SourceFoge or the official website. Images are available for both 32 and 64 bit architecture:
The image does not take up much, only 400-odd megabytes, so it loads quickly.
Step 2. Burn to media
For Android installations you need to use either a flash drive or a rewritable disk. But a flash drive is still better. I do not recommend using various utilities to burn the image; do it using this command:
dd if=~/android-x86-6.0.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=5M
Here ~/android-x86-6.0.iso is the image you just downloaded, and /dev/sdc is your flash drive.
Step 3. BIOS setup
Everything is standard here. Restart your computer and during the BIOS splash screen, click F2, F8, Shift+F2 or Del to login BIOS setup, then go to the Boot tab and select in 1st Boot Device your flash drive.
All you have to do is go to the tab Exit and press Exit & Save Changes.
Installing Android 6.0
Step 1. Start installation
Immediately after restarting your computer, you will see this bootloader window. Here you can either boot into the Live system or proceed to install it. We will be interested last point, installation:
The installer will start very quickly:
Step 3. Select a drive
In the first step, you have to select the disk on which you will install:
Step 4: Partition Table
Next, if this disk is not yet partitioned, you need to select a partition table. You can use GPT, but I don't recommend it because there is a high chance that the installation will simply freeze. Therefore, at this step we select No. In this case, the MBR will be used:
Step 5. Create a partition
Android x86 6.0 installation is performed on only one partition. And in this step we have to create it. The cfdisk utility will be used for this. First click New to create new section. You can navigate through the buttons using the left/right arrows, and press using Enter:
Select type primary, primary:
Find the Bootable button and press Enter to make this partition bootable:
Find and click the Write button to write the changes to disk. To confirm, type yes:
All that remains is to press the quit button to exit the program:
Step 6. Selecting a partition
Once the partitioning is complete, you need to select the newly created partition:
Step 7: File System
Select file system eg ext4
Step 8: Formatting
Since we need a clean partition, we agree that it will be formatted:
Step 9. Bootloader
We will need a bootloader, so select Yes:
Step 10. EFI Boot Loader
And here EFI boot loader we don't need it, given that we used MBR. Select Skip:
Step 11. Access Mode
In this window you need to choose whether to mount system partition/system in read-write mode. This will be useful for installing new programs, so select Yes:
Step 12: Complete installation
Wait for all files to be unpacked:
When the installation of Android on your computer is complete, select Reboot to reboot your computer and log into the new system:
Step 14. Bootloader
Select the first bootloader item:
Step 15. Starting the system
Wait until the system boots.
Step 16: Done
That's all, installing Android x86 on your computer is complete. Now you can use Android directly on your computer. You can install and run Android applications, play games:
conclusions
As you have seen, installing Android x86 on a PC is not so different from other operating systems. If you are lucky and the system fully supports your equipment, then you can very easily get a full-fledged Android system to your computer. If you have any questions, write in the comments!
To complete the video with the Android installation process from American video blogger:
At the Google I/O 2015 developer conference held at the end of May, an announcement was made new version Android, and already on October 5, the final version of the system was released for the first gadgets, including Nexus 9, Nexus 7 2013, Nexus 6, Nexus 5, as well as the Nexus Player media center. In this material we have prepared for you a description of all new Android products 6.0 Marshmallow, a review of which will certainly be of interest to those who plan to switch to a new operating system in the next six months (of course, when updates to official or custom firmware for the most popular hardware devices are released).
Interface
The first change that's immediately apparent when you first boot up the system is the phone's updated boot animation, which features the Mountain View-based company's updated logo.
Concerning initial setup smartphone, everything remains the same as in .
Before we start getting acquainted with the visual component, we need to clarify one nuance. The same Google Now application, which was part of the interface model of the previous ones, is used as a shell. Android versions. A reasonable question may arise: why should I update to 6.0, if on my phone with an already old system I have the same interface as on new products. As has happened before, in Marshmallow all the innovations are hidden “under the hood”, that is, not visible at first glance. This is exactly what will be discussed in this material.
The first noticeable innovation is the unlock screen. Here the purpose of the keys has changed (for example, when you press the lower left icon, “Google Start” is launched, whereas in the previous version the “dialer” was called up). Moreover, from now on you need to drag icons directly from the very corner, which at first glance is not very convenient.
No changes were made to the desktop. A colored microphone and an updated logo of the developer company appeared along with the updated Google Now build. What is really worth noting is that you can now delete applications directly from the desktop; before this you could only delete shortcuts.
Along with this feature, Google Start introduced a change in scroll orientation to the application menu. If in previous versions you could scroll through the list from right to left, now the combination is used from top to bottom and vice versa. A search field is always displayed at the top of the screen, below which are the four most frequently called programs. The order of placement of programs is simple - first there are applets starting with a number, and then all the rest in alphabetical order.
Searching for applets is lightning fast. This will certainly appeal to users who use a large number of games and applications on their phone. From now on, look carefully the necessary program You won't have to scroll through the list anymore. You can only set the initial letters, and after a couple of moments you can already work with the application.
Certain changes have also been made to the animation of launching, minimizing, and switching between applications from the task manager. All animations work very smoothly and smoothly.
Google Now on Tap
The release of Android 6.0 accompanied new feature called "Google Now on Tap", providing the ability to search in specific program. By holding down the home button for a few seconds, the new mechanism will analyze the contents of the screen. You can search for data on an open web page, in mail, messages, Twitter, music player and other programs. It is worth noting that only data located in the active part of the display is subject to such analysis. The analysis procedure itself is incredibly fast.
How it works? For example, let’s use such a search at a time when a musical composition is playing in the smartphone’s player.
When you launch Google Now on Tap, you get a summary of the song in pictures, Google search, YouTube, and in addition to this, information about the artist on social networks and Youtube. Overall, working with this tool is quite convenient. The main disadvantage is the unavailability of this feature if Russian is specified as the main language in the smartphone settings. Let's hope that multilingual support will appear in the coming updates.
Application Permissions
In our Marshmallow review, we'll touch on a conceptual change in app permission management. If earlier, when installing the applet, the installer requested permission to access the calendar, SMS, contacts, multimedia files and other objects, now the installation goes smoothly and without unnecessary questions. Now requests for individual permissions appear when the user is already working with the corresponding applet, and at a certain point in time a requirement appears for access to a file, photo, microphone, GPS coordinates, etc. That is, if previously you had to accept all the conditions en masse when installing the program, now all this happens gradually and measuredly.
Storage and external media management
A new interesting item has appeared in the main settings table - “Storage and USB drive”. Using this menu, you can find out about the contents of external or internal storage (for example, a flash drive or microSD memory card connected using an OTG cable). Although this integrated file manager can only delete, move and share files, the very fact of its presence is undoubtedly pleasing.
Battery usage and battery saving
Quite profound changes have also been made to the battery usage mode. Now in energy consumption statistics you can see not only the battery life of the gadget, but also the actual indicators of energy consumption in mAh.
But that's not the main thing. The main innovation introduced back in the Developer Preview is the Doze saving mode. What is its use? Android apps can now be configured to save battery power when running. In the currently available version, almost all applets are configured so that the battery works with them economically (the only exception concerns Google Play services). The essence of the Doze function itself is to increase the battery life of the smartphone in stand-by mode. If previously the battery dropped by 15-20% overnight, now the representative of the fifth line Nexus smartphones for sleep mode, 1-2% discharge per night is quite enough. To achieve these results, there is no need to turn off Wi-Fi or use airplane mode. Real magic, isn't it?
Fingerprint scanner support
Android 6.0 firmware includes a special API that allows you to unify fingerprinting tools for authorization in programs. Now all that remains is to wait for the new smartphone models to be equipped with the scanners themselves, since even in the phones of the series Google Nexus, in which Marshmallow is only available, fingerprint scanners have not yet been delivered. We expect the presence of such a hardware solution in future models.
USB Type-C support
The latest hardware version of the USB interface, called Type-C (or simply USB-C), is increasingly becoming fashionable. The main advantage of USB 3.1 over the previous modification 3.0 is twice as large throughput. If early version provided information transfer speeds of up to 5 Gbit/s (625 Mb/s), the new interface allows you to increase it to 10 Gbit/s. In addition, this type of connection uses a completely new connector. In addition, following the specification of the standard, Type-C uses a current of 1.5 and 3.0 A, while the voltage is 5 V. As a result, this gives a significant increase in the charging speed of the gadget.
An additional bonus of the new interface is the ability to charge tablets, smartphones and phones from one another, which is useful when camping, on the road and in other situations where there is no access to another outlet.
Let's sum it up
In fact, in Marshmallow, which we reviewed with an emphasis on global and noticeable innovations, massive work was done on bugs. Although there are virtually no external changes, you can see that Lollipop's code optimizations have made many tools run smoother and much faster. Autonomy has increased significantly, especially in stand-by mode. New goodies are encouraging, such as Google Now on Tap, a function for fine-tuning applet permissions, and a storage manager. In the next minor builds you can expect multi-window mode both on tablets and, probably, on smartphones, as well as support for the technology Android Pay for contactless payments.
Photo material for the article: / applepack.ru / itc.ua / xdrv.ru / gottabemobile.com
