INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The nickname for Android 9 is &Pie.& It not the most inspired of Android names, but it&ll do
What really matters at the end of the day are the new features in Pie — and there are plenty of those.
If you are a Pixel owner, you&ll be
happy to hear that Pie will start rolling out as an over-the-air update today
The same goes for every other device that was enrolled in the Android Beta (that includes any Sony Mobile, Xiaomi, HMD Global, Oppo, Vivo,
OnePlus and Essential devices that got the betas) and qualifying Android One devices
Everybody else, well, you know the drill
Wait until your manufacturer launches it for you… which should be theend of the year for some — and never for quite a few
others.
Overall, Pie is a solid upgrade
The only real disappointmenthere is that Pie won''t launch with Android new digital wellness features by default
Instead, you&ll have to sign up for a betaand own a Pixel device
That because these new features won''t officially launch until the fall (Google hardware event, which traditionally happens in early
October, seems like a good bet for the date).
Let talk about the features you&ll get when you update to Android 9 Pie, though
The most obvious sign that you have updated to the new version is the new system navigation bar, which replaces the standard three-icon
navigation bar that has served Android users well for the last couple of iterations
The new navigation bar replaces the three icons (back, home, overview) that are virtually always on screen with a more adaptive system and a
home button that now lets you swipe to switch between apps (instead of tapping on the overview button)
You can also now swipe up on the home button and see full-screen previews of the apps you used recently, as well as the names of a few apps
that Google thinks you&ll want to use
A second up-swipe and you get to the usual list of all of your installed apps.
In day-to-day use, I&m not yet 100 percent convinced that
this new system is any better than the old one
Maybe I just don''t like change, but the whole swiping thing does not strike me as very efficient, and if you leave your finger on the home
button for a split-second longer than Google expects, it&ll launch the Assistant instead of letting you swipe between apps
You get used to it, though, and you can get back to the old system if you want to.
Google suggestions for apps you&ll like and want to use
when you swipe up feel like a nice tech demo but aren''t all that useful in day-to-day use
I&m sure Google uses some kind of machine learning to power these suggestions, but I&d rather use that area as an extended favorites bar
where I can pin a few additional apps
It not that Android suggestions were necessarily wrong and that these weren''t apps I wanted to use, it mostly that the apps it suggested
were already on my home screen anyway
I don''t think I ever started an app from there while using the last two betas.
But that enough grumbling, because it actually all of the
little things that make Android 9 Pie better
There stuff like the adaptive battery management, which makes your battery last longer by learning which apps you use the most
And that great (though I&m not sure how much influence it has had on my daily battery life), but the new feature that actually made me smile
was a new popup that tells you that you have maybe 20 percent of battery left and that this charge should last until 9:20pm.That actually
useful.
Google also loves to talk about its Adaptive Brightness feature that also learns about how you like your screen brightness based
on your surroundings, but what actually made a difference for me was that Google now blends out the whole settings drawer when you change
the setting so that you can actually see what difference those changes make
It also nice to have the volume slider pop up right next to the volume buttons now.
Talking about sound: Your phone now plays a pleasant
little sound when you plug in the charger
It the little things that matter, after all.
The other new machine learning-powered feature is the smart text selection tool that
recognizes the meaning of the text you selected and then allows you to suggest relevant actions like opening Google Maps or bringing up the
share dialog for an address
It nifty when it works, but here, too, what actually makes the real difference in daily usage is that the text selection magnifier shows you
a larger, clearer picture of what you&re selecting (and it sits right on top of what you are selecting), which makes it far easier to pick
the right text (and yes, iOS pretty much does the same thing).
And now we get to the part where I wish I could tell you all about the
flagship Digital Wellness features in Pie (because pie and wellness go together like Gwyneth Paltrow and jade eggs), but we&ll have to wait
Here what we knowwill be available: a dashboard for seeing where you spend time on your device; an app timer that lets you set limits on how
long you can use Instagram, for example, and then grays out the icon of that app; and a Wind Down feature that switches on the night-light
mode, turns on Do Not Disturb and fades the screen to grayscale before it bedtime.
The one wellness feature you can try now if you are on
Pie already is the new Do Not Disturb tool that lets you turn off all visual interruptions
To try out everything else, you&ll have to sign up for the beta here.
Another feature that only launching in the fall is &slices& (like
I was looking forward to this one as it&ll allow developers to highlight parts of their apps (maybe to start playing a song or hail a car)
in the Android Pie search bar when warranted
Maybe Google wasn''t ready yet — or maybe its partners just hadn''t built enough slices yet, but either way, we won''t see these pop up in
Android Pie until later this year.
And that Android 9 Pie
It a nice update for sure, and while Google loves to talk about all of the machine learning and intelligence it baking into Android, at the
end of the day, it the small quality of life changes that actually make the biggest difference.
15 names that would have been better than
