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Storage space on smartphones that don’t support memory card has always been a major issue. With the advancement of new applications and technologies day by day, the size of the applications is becoming larger and larger. While devices with 64GB of storage may not think twice about installing an app over 100MB but those with limited storage could be getting notification of “Storage space full!” and no one is happy with that.
Google’s recent release of its storage management application Files Go, it appears that Google is trying it’s best to make storage issues as minimal as possible. In order to accomplish that task, Google releases another product to improve battery life of smartphones. In October, Android Open Source Project (AOSP) framework released Android Oreo’s key features of superior battery life.
Android Oreo isn’t available in its final form yet but it really helps when your phone storage is insufficient as it works by clearing the cache of apps which haven’t been used for a while. It’s an automatic feature that will be triggered when your device is short on storage. Applications that Android considers as not recently used in a specific window or by packages in the background will be marked as inactive. Due to this feature, background apps won’t be able to do as much with location updates as they have done in past. This will prevent phone from sipping or becoming laggy by consuming battery life on unnecessary or irrelevant processes rather than spending on more prioritized tasks.
Here’s How This Feature Actually Works!
After a length of specific time by Android’s sysproppm.dexopt.unopt_after_inactive_days field, applications that are not used in a foreground or by packages in the background are marked as inactive and downgraded. The applications marked as “inactive” will not have any cache files generated for them, hence reducing storage space. Caches include certain, non-essential data like images and saved states which normally make the app faster and more efficient (cached data doesn’t have to be reloaded when you return to an app after doing something else, for example). It’s a good idea to apply this process to apps that are not used often as the data can be re-cached at some point later when needed.
How much space this feature will save, in the long term depends upon individual apps and habits! Many applications can get by harboring less than one megabyte of cached data, while others like Chrome can rack up far more data. While the feature is a pleasant enhancement to improving smart things Android phones can do, we might have to wait a while till we see this getting implemented in more smartphones other than the Pixels and the Nexuses. Android continues to evolve, it’s becoming less revolutionary on its face and more evolutionary on the inside. If you look keenly you will find there’s a lot more going on with the newest versions of Android.
This feature will come in handy in phones with limited storage and maybe someday we’ll get rid of the microSD cards that we carry with us all the time. Along with this in-built feature, Android 8.0 Oreo arrives with a lot more advanced features. A new copy, paste feature and highlighting tool have also been added to it, as well as a picture-in-picture mode for making multitasking fast and improved notifications menus.
Check out the Android Oreo’s latest features here now!
Do you think this would be a good feature to have on your handset? Or is there something specific you are looking forward to in Android 8.1 Oreo? Let us know in the comments.
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