MANILA, Philippines – Google on Thursday, May 28 (May 29 Manila time), previewed Android M for developers, introducing 6 categories in which Android M would be providing improvements and refinements to the Android operating system.

Dave Burke, Vice President of Android Engineering at Google, explained these improvements in terms of app permissions, web experience, app links, mobile payments, fingerprint support, and power management.

In terms of app permissions, Android M will introduce customizable app permissions With customizable app permissions, an app will no longer ask for permissions at install, but rather when the app encounters a case where it needs access to something, like the camera or microphone.

With regard to the web experience, Burke touched upon a feature called Chrome custom tabs, which would harness chrome’s capabilitiies within applications. This is essentially the equivalent of in-app Chrome browser functionality for future apps.

With regard to user experience, Android M will also introduce smarter app linking, allowing specific links to be automatically verified by apps that “own” those links. For example, Twitter links would automatically open in the Twitter app, if one has it.

With regard to mobile payments and fingerprint support, Google says Android Pay has a focus on simplicity, security, and choice, with protections made to ensure any card numbers you use with Android Pay would not be shared with stores. In connection with this is fingerprint support, which would allow authentication of purchases on Android M apps with a fingerprint. Google is also building official fingerprint reader support right into Android, instead of third parties.

Lastly, power management is also important to take note of, but a new feature called Doze will help with power management. Doze is a mode that activates when your Android M device is left unattended, and uses motion detection to determine when it should cut off applications. The Doze mode still allows high priority alerts and alarms for users, and reportedly allows a Nexus 9 to last twice as long on standby mode versus one running Android Lollipop.

In addition, Android M devices in the future will take advantage of USB Type-C connectivity to allow for better charging or to use that same connector to rapidly send and receive data from your computer.

Android M is slated to launch later this year. – Rappler.com