Google’s new sweet dish Android “Pie” has finally started rolling out. The new update is packed with exciting features like extended battery life and new gesture navigation.
Pie bags a more colorful UI as compared to it’s predecessors, addition of new animations on the display and rounded edges on almost everything. Thankfully, it’s still as fast as Android Oreo, at least on Google’s Pixel smartphones.
Also Read: Find out whether your phone gets the latest Android Pie update
Here are the new exciting feature of Android 9 Pie:-
Time on the left for the screen
The time bar has been moved from right to the left status bar. It makes room for screen cutouts called “notches”. Same as OnePlus 6 and Huawei P20 Pro phones.
Adaptive Battery and Brightness
Adaptive battery and Brightness is the biggest improvement in the update.
Alphabet’s AI-outfit DeepMind has developed an Adaptive Battery and Brightness which learns an individual’s usage pattern and directs the power to the app which you use frequently.
So far users of the Android P beta programme on Google Pixels have found an increase in the battery life by 20%. The percentage will differ in a different phone.
Smart replies
Smart replies have been in several apps for a while, including Gmail and Google’s dedicated Smart Reply app.
After the new update, it will be pushed to more apps which will be accessible directly from the notifications for easy, one-touch replies.
Text selection
After double tapping on the screen and enlarging the text. The enlarged text can be dragged and dropped in the magnifying box.
The new update will help you to magnify the text you select on your screen and when you drag one of the text selection handles you now see a magnified box. Which appears immediately above your finger to make fine grain selection easier, particularly with tiny text.
Privacy
The apps running on the background are prone to leak data, as they are required to be given permission for location, microphone, camera and network status. With Android P, apps given permission for running on your phone background will not be able to turn rogue and spy on users without their knowledge.
Smartphone addiction feature
Two big new features are yet to arrive: Slices and Google’s Digital Wellbeing tools
Slices
The Slices display will allow apps to directly display within the Google search app.
Example; While searching Chinese restaurants the apps will include showing photos taken in a Chinese restaurant for user experience.
Digital Wellbeing
Google’s anti-smartphone addiction tools called “Digital Wellbeing”, is currently in beta testing for a select number of users. They include Dashboard, which shows you how much time you’re spending on your phone and a timer alert for the excess of usage on any particular app. A new Do Not Disturb (DnD) function that silences both visual/audible alerts is also added. The feature later allows the system to switch on DnD mode and fades the screen to grayscale as bedtime approaches.