th such a dramatically changed Android, surely the Settings menu drastically different, right? ong! Surprisingly, the Android settings menus are very much like those in KitKat. Android is sitll in a “developer preview” state, we likely haven’t seen all the changes in store for us this fall when the next version of Android is released. Here are some side-by-side comparisons so you can easily see what’s changed, what hasn’t. though a few things have changed, Android s settings aren’t going to alarm anyone. Remaining largely intact when compared to KitKat, primarily just gives it a nice spit-shine . th only two devices officially supporting the developer build, only time will tell if larger tablets will also adopt the layout, or if bigger tablets will get a three-column view. Given that larger tablets usually take advantage of Fragments to put the menu on the side of the screen, it wouldn’t be completely surprising if the current layout remains the same. The lse notification light option is now buried in a sub-menu of the Sound Notifcations settings (where it makes a little more sense, as the light would only pulse when you got a new notification). ile some options that have moved into different menus make sense, moving them to a deeper sub-menu is not necessarily an upgrade. Android includes the new Do not disturb mode, more control over when your phone rings or vibrates when receiving a call or notification. The latest version of Android also includes new options for showing notifications other sounds. Note: The phone with KitKat we used for screenshots was the HTC One M8 ay ition. Stock Android does not typically include a BoomSound option. The action overflow settings (three stacked dots in the upper right) is where the new Battery saver option is found, a feature many manufactuers add to Android, we’re excited to in stock Android. Aside from the two aforementioned features, the obvious visual changes, the battery settings in Android are very much the same as KitKat. Now that there is no quick setting for the battery settings, the menu take a bit more work to get to this menu. And there’s still no option to display battery percentage on the menu bar, which is just remarkably dumb. This is also the only place in the settings menu where you can choose the screen to Auto-rotate. The option is now officially baked into the Quick settings options, though it was previously found both in the Display Accessibility settings menus. The option to choose your own runtime is now missing in the Developer options, this is because Android uses the ART runtime as the new default, signaling the end of the Dalvik runtime that the operating system has used since it debuted. (Note that the ART runtime in Android is far more advanced than the experimental version in KitKat, so you can’t directly compare performance compatibility between them.) By the time Android officially rolls out, there could be even more goodies in the developer options, but for now, nothing is all that different.
