A few days with Android N
I’m going to preface this with this being development software it’s expected to be buggy. I understand this. I don’t have a huge problem with it, these are just my experiences with Android N (current as of yesterday,) a Nexus 9, and a tablet that only needs to do one thing reliably.
So my first thing of note with N is there’s no way to turn it off gracefully. I press power, I have a popup that asks if I want to shut down, I choose yes, the system goes through the shutdown, and reboots. In a minute we’re back at the home screen. Repeat as many times as you want.
The new doze mode seems to logjam running apps. Specifically I have an app I call “baby knock out” but is actually Relax MP. You put a little light rain on in the background with a wisp of a drip going on and my 7-month-old is out for 10 hours straight. It’s been a freaking miracle, until Android N.
I’ll run Relax MP for a while, and then I’ll notice there’s no sound. Wake the tablet up and the app is there but unresponsive. Swipe to kill the app and it’s still somehow there. Re-launch the app and wait for a minute and get a warning that the app is unresponsive and now I can kill it.
It appears to be doing something with Bluetooth… if I were guessing, which I am, I’d say it’s working on finding the lowest possible power that it can transmit at and stepping power up or down as needed. I say this because I used to be able to walk away holding the N9 from the speaker and things were fine, now it’s choppy until I get where I get. I mean it could be my baby’s developing Bluetooth defense mechanisms but who knows.
It’ll randomly drop the bluetooth connection also. Nice water sounds coming from across the room, suddenly it’s on the tablet for 3 seconds, and then I’ll hear “CONNECTED”, a baby going “ugh!” and then the water sound over there.
Only apps that keep doing something in the background seem to jam… extended file copies, streaming audio, etc…
Apps seem slower, disappear without warning, menu transitions looks significantly smoother and kind of cool, it still works flawlessly with Perfect Viewer so I’m good with that.
It’s a developer preview, when they get it sped up, locked down, and bug stomped I’m pretty sure I’m going to be a fanboy. For now however I’m going to just attempt to figure out a Tasker profile that will enable me to defeat the new doze mode and keep the new power saving schemes from defeating my baby sleeping schemes.
Overall neat, but if you need things to be stable, this does not seem to be the bastion of stability.
