Now that the latest Android OS is out, many enthusiasts want to find out what actually is included in this newest version. So far, the Android Oreo is well-received, and a lot of reviews laud it as a worthy successor of the popular OS.

As it turns out, one of the major overhauls in Android Oreo is the notification screen. We all know how notifications can sometimes get too cluttered to be managed efficiently. Oreo solves this problem by incorporating a number of features that will help manage the notifications from Android's ever-growing library of apps.

Dots like the iPhone

First off, the home screen now features those notification dots that iPhone users may be familiar with. These are the little dots that appear in the corner of an app's icon when you have a notification from that particular app. However, unlike the iPhone dots, the ones on Android Oreo don't have numbers.

Users can also long-press the icons. Doing so will display a truncated version of the notifications. They can swipe away the notifications by this method, as well.

Notification grouping

According to a review by The Verge, the notifications are also now grouped into categories. These categories are ranked by priority. The topmost tier is called "Major Ongoing," which will include stuff like currently playing music.

The next group is "People to People," which will include messages and other alerts from social media. Basically, this is where notifications about communications to and from your contacts will be included.

Most everything else will be included in the "General" group.

There is one other group called "BTW," which will include the least important notifications.

This group is needed because it's been reported that Android Oreo will be more demanding with notifications. More actions from apps will be reported, and these will be shoved down the BTW group so as not to clutter the other three priority groups.

This is also another way users can judge what apps are the most resource-hogging.

"It will mean that apps that hog resources will be called out and you'll have the option to kill them, but they won't be called out so loudly that it will annoy you," Dieter Bohn writes in the review.

Hopefully, the Android Oreo updates will be rolled out to phones and tablets soon. However, this being Android, getting consistent updates will be too much to hope for. It's been generally accepted that one surefire way to get the OS is to just buy yourself a brand new Google Pixel.
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