Google is showing no signs of slowing its pace of Android development with its iterations coming one after the other. Right now, the one coming up is the K release of Android which is being developed under the dessert related code name of Key Lime Pie. This will be the fifth iteration of the operating system. So, now as we wait on official news of the Android 5.0 release date and features, we can start to pull together the Key Lime Pie rumors and put together what we can expect from the upcoming version.
Performance Profiles
Android 5.0 is being expected to provide a simple way of managing performance and hence, power use automatically. People have been given a taste of this with the Blocking Mode in Samsung’s Jelly Bean update on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Note 2 but we’d like to see the functionality expanded. Something like a Gaming mode for max power delivery, an Overnight low-power state for slumbering on minimal power and maybe a Reading mode for no bothersome data connections and a super-low backlight would be great. A little power strip widget for phone performance profiles would do the job of giving us an easy way to manage states.
Better Multiple Device Support
Google does a good job at connecting several phones and tablets but there are some loopholes in the coverage. Like if you’re watching a film on one Android device, you are limited to resuming your film on the same device and you can’t switch to a tablet in the middle. Google should look in to this matter in the Key Lime Pie.
Enhanced Social Network Support
Android doesn’t really do much for social network users out of the box, with most of the fancy social widgets and features coming from the hardware makers through their own custom skins. Sony integrates Facebook brilliantly in its phones, and even LG makes a great social network aggregator widget that incorporates Facebook and Twitter. But there are no cool aggregator apps as a part of the standard Android setup.
A Video Chat App
Google puts front facing cameras on its phones (Nexus 7) but there is no common video chat app. One has to download Skype for the purpose. Android should have its own video chat option.
Multi Select in Contacts
The Android contacts section is pretty useful, but it could be managed a little better. The problem comes when you have the idea of emailing or texting a handful of your friends. The way that’s currently done is by emailing one, then adding the rest individually. Some sort of checkbox system that let users scroll through names and create a mailing list on the fly through the contacts listing in Android Key Lime Pie would make this much easier.
A Never Update Option
This feature would annoy developers so is unlikely to happen, but it’d be nice if we could refuse app updates permanently in Android 5.0, just in case we’d rather stick with a current version of a tool than be forced to upgrade. Sure, you can set apps to manual update and then just ignore the update prompt forever, but it’d be nice to know we can keep a favored version of an app without accidentally updating it.
