Android 9 Pie: Check Out What’s New And Exciting!
It’s that time of the year again when the new version of Android starts to roll out. While Android updates have been rather slow (you may say lethargic) to roll out to the majority of devices, there is hope this time round that the updates should roll out a bit quicker. That’s thanks to Google’s Project Treble which is aimed squarely at speeding up system updates. If you have a phone that launched with Android Oreo, you should be getting the update to Android 9 Pie pretty soon. Keeping that in mind, here are the top features you should look out for.
1. Navigation Gestures
Google has taken a leaf out of Apple’s book by incorporating navigation gestures into the UI. This is the biggest change to the OS and a big move away from the three button navigation system Android users have been so familiar with. In our experience this makes getting around much faster and more intuitive.
2. Recent Apps
The view for the recent apps is now much more functional. Apps now show their full windows, text can be selected, copied, and pasted from one app to another, and there’s the handy Google search bar at the bottom. You can now do much more than just switching between apps.
3. AI Suggestions
Google has generally been ahead of the industry in incorporating AI into their products. Their AI push takes another step forward with Android 9 Pie. Call someone often at a particular time of the day? Google will pop that contact to the top of your dialer then. Plug in your headphones? Google will ask if you want to continue listening from where you last left off. Soon, you may see suggestions from other apps as well. This usage of AI makes your life simpler in small ways, but all of it adds up to an OS which is more intelligent and constantly evolving.
4. Digital Wellbeing
While this is not yet out, it will be rolling out soon. If you are concerned at how much time you spend looking at your phone screen all day, this nifty feature can help you set time limits for apps, show you how much time you spend in which app and help you to do more with your life beyond your screen. It remains to be seen how many of us will successfully curb our addiction to the screen, but we’re eager to try it and find out. Maybe it’ll mean we can finally catch up with friends in person.
5. Battery Life Improvements
As we saw earlier, AI has a big role to play in terms of proactively suggesting what to do next on your phone. Here, Google is using AI behind the scenes to assess which apps draw most power, then correlate this with your app usage patterns and then proactively cut them off when they feel like you won’t really be using them. The result is that background tasks consume far less battery and saving you from battery life anxiety at the end of your day.
6. Screenshot Improvements
If you’re the kind of person who likes to take screenshots, crop them, annotate them, and then send them out, your juggle across multiple apps just got a bit less tedious. Once you take a screenshot in Android 9 Pie, you will be able to immediately crop and edit your screenshots right then and there.
Supported Devices
While the track record of device manufacturers isn’t great, you can expect quicker update roll outs this time round. In fact, the update is already live on Pixel and Essential smartphones and will be rolling out to devices from Sony Mobile, Xiaomi, HMD Global, Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus. These manufacturers were a part of a beta program where they got early access to pre-release versions of the OS so they could start their implementation work early. This is a step in the right direction with Google giving importance to faster roll out of new OS versions, especially since Android Oreo is currently used only on barely 12% of all Android devices.
Conclusion
Android 9 Pie looks like it will be the most advanced and intelligent version of the world’s most popular OS yet. It is a forward looking vision of what personal computing could be. Expect the themes touched upon in this version to become foundational for the next few iterations. Just remember, always practice safe updating: backup first, update later.
