Android 10, or Android Q, is the official Android name for the 10.0 update of the open source Android mobile operating system and the 17th major release for the extremely popular mobile OS. Android Q follows 2018’s Android 9 Oreo release and marks a departure from bestowing a dessert themed moniker upon each new release of the mobile OS.
Android 10 made its official debut on September 3, 2019, arriving first on Google Pixel and the Essential Phone devices, and by March 2020 it had already become the second-most popular Android release in use behind Android Pie.
What’s New in Android 10
Some of Android 10 s most prominent enhancements and new features include Live Captioning for providing on-demand captioning of audio, video, and podcast content; Smart Reply with artificial intelligence technology to help predict specific patterns of the primary user of the smartphone and provide helpful assistance to the user automatically; and a Dark Theme similar to the Apple iPhone s Dark Mode.
The Android Q release also adds Gesture Navigation for making it easier to move and swipe between apps, a Focus mode to help users block out distractions and pause non-essential apps temporarily to help the user focus on the task at hand, ongoing security patches and updates via the Google Play Store ( Project Mainline ), and a Family Link tool that s part of Android s Digital Wellbeing initiative for helping families managing access, setting time and app limits as needed for various members in the family, and monitoring screen time usage.
The Android 10 release of the Android mobile OS follows a number of earlier updates for Android, including Cupcake (v1.5), Donut (v1.6), Eclair (v2.0), FroYo (v2.2), Gingerbread (v2.3), Honeycomb (v3.0), Ice Cream Sandwich (v4.0), Jelly Bean (v4.1, v4.2 and v4.3), KitKat (v4.4), Lollipop (v5.0) Marshmallow (v6.0), Nougat (v7.0), Oreo (v8.0), and the aforementioned Android Pie (v9.0).
