Android M Developer Preview 3: 5 Things to Know

5 Exciting Android M Features

While we've already went over almost all of the changes in detail from the previous slide, there's also a few key headliner features that users will love. Things that Android owners are excited about, and we wanted to share those here while we wait for Android M Dev 3 to be released.

Google Now on Tap, which can be seen here on video, is one of the most exciting Android features we've come across in awhile. Something we hope makes it in the 3rd M beta, but probably won't be available until the final release date.

Fingerprint support will alow for enhanced security, unlocking devices or singing into accounts with a finger, and making payments with the new Android Pay. We've yet to see Android Pay, which will essentially replace Google Wallet, but expect more on that soon.

Google's also changed the volume controls to a more usable and granular system, which will be much better than how they changed volume controls in Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Then of course "Doze" which promises to make Android M have the best battery life of any Android release by letting apps and processes sleep more than usual, when not in use. We've noticed a HUGE increase in standby battery life on the Nexus 9 using doze.

Finally, it looks like Google will be adding some level of customization. The second developer preview let users change the settings menu to a dark theme, similar to the Google Keyboard. There's a system UI tuner that lets us change the quick settings in the notification pulldown bar, and we see some sort of multi-taking split-screen option that's broken, but could be available on the final release.

There are tons of new features, but these are a few of our favorites that are coming soon.