Android 9 Pie vs Android 8.0 Oreo Walkthrough: What’s New

New Vertical Volume Bar

Once again, Google completely changed the volume controls on Android. Instead of having a small box on the top of the screen that you can expand to change the volume for system, notifications, or media, it's on the side of the screen.

Now when you change the volume it automatically changes "media" volume, not the ringer or notification volume. You'll also notice the entire volume toolbar is on the side. This is likely to stay out of the way of any notches. 

However, this side volume toolbar is more useful, too. You can tap the sound icon to instantly turn media to zero. There's a second box below the volume that you can tap and it goes through three modes. Ring, Vibrate, and Mute. It's like the mute slider on the iPhone or OnePlus devices, but a software mute control. 

This is a welcomed change to volume controls. We really like that it changes media first, not ringtone volume levels.