After several months in betas, each of which brought its own fresh teapot tempest about how gestures would work, Google is officially releasing the final version of Android 10 to Pixel users begun on 3rd Sep, 2019. In what may be a hopeful sign that this version of Android will come to other phones faster than before, Google is promising that it is “working with a number of partners to launch or upgrade devices to Android 10 this year.”
There are a few headline features in Android 10 beyond the new gesture system, including stricter permissions and privacy controls, a new “Focus Mode” for disabling distracting apps, simpler notification controls, better integrated family controls, and a new Dark Theme.
One More essential factor is Important updates will be invisible to most users: “Project Mainline” will allow Google to issue some critical security patches directly through the Play Store instead of waiting for manufacturers and carriers to distribute them. In fact, phones that are upgraded from Android 9 Pie to Android 10 won’t support it.
Focus Mode is launching only in beta. Another headline feature called “Live Caption” For deaf users, Google is adding a Live Caption feature that will add subtitles to any video being watched on the phone. You won’t need a data connection to use the feature — it’s all done on the device itself.
Google says that all of its first-party apps are committed to supporting the new Dark Theme, but not all of them have made the deadline for Android’s release. Gmail, for example, is still working on compatibility with the Dark Theme and won’t have support for it until later this month.
The feature on Android 10 that has garnered the most attention is the new gesture navigation system. GESTURE NAVIGATION Android 10 adds gestural navigation to the Android platform. Instead of using the staple navigation buttons Android has always had, users swipe and gesture across the screen to go back, return to the home screen, open the app drawer, and trigger Google Assistant. In the final beta release, Google continued to tweak and change how gestures behave in Android 10 — and then tried to explain its reasoning. It’s still confusing to use.
10th version of Android is also the first since nearly the beginning that doesn’t have a public dessert code name. Google made the switch in the name of being more globally inclusive and not, it says, because picking a Q-named dessert was too difficult.
Google typically rolls out major operating system updates over the course of a few days, so your Pixel phone might not get an update alert right away.
You can check for it by going to Settings -> System -> Advanced -> System Update.
As usual, other Android device manufacturers will announce their roll out plans for Android 10 upgrades separately, and it will likely take weeks or months for the upgrade to arrive on many non-Pixel devices.
