Some of the amazing, more elusive features of Android 8.1 Oreo have continued to roll out several weeks after the first noteworthy update to the Android OS was released. Take for example; yesterday Google announced that Oreo will now display the speed level of transmission of close open Wi-Fi networks to aid you in deciding if they are even worth the attempt of having you connect to them. The Wi-Fi settings menu will now display either one of the following four speed labels: Very Fast, Fast, OK, or Slow.
According to Google, the disparity between Very Fast and Fast, is that you can stream “very high-quality videos” on the Very Fast label and “most videos” on the Fast one. Most coffee shop dwellers should do just fine with the OK level, as that is enough for browsing on the web, social media, and streaming on Spotify.
Private Wi-Fi networks that require passwords do not display any speed data since it is really none of your business and Google will not be able to randomly test them, but they however will continue to show signal strength. Google says network administrators can opt out of the Android’s Wi-Fi Assistant showing speed information also by using a “canary URL”
So just in case you ever thought that Android 8.1 was all about cheeseburger emoji and switching on the Pixel 2 Visual Core chip, you’re about to be disappointed because as it turns out, there’s still more neat stuff in there for you to discover (and that is once your device gets Android 8.1 to begin with). Until that happens you will just have to wait like most of the other Android phone users who do not yet have the new Oreo update.
