The latest release of Android is here! And it comes with a heaping helping of artificial intelligence baked in to make your phone smarter, simpler and more tailored to you, Google said in an official announcement to herald the introduction of Android 9 Pie.
“We’ve built Android 9 to learn from you—and work better for you—the more you use it. From predicting your next task so you can jump right into the action you want to take, to prioritizing battery power for the apps you use most, to helping you disconnect from your phone at the end of the day, Android 9 adapts to your life and the ways you like to use your phone,” Google stated.
The broad aim for Android 9 is to make phones even smarter by learning from users and adapting to usage patterns.
“That’s why Android 9 comes with features like Adaptive Battery, which learns the apps you use most and prioritizes battery for them, and Adaptive Brightness, which learns how you like to set the brightness in different settings, and does it for you,” Google said.
Android 9 also helps you to get things done faster with App Actions, which predicts what you’ll want to do next based on your context and displays that action right on your phone.
Here is a scenario.
Say it’s Tuesday morning and you’re preparing for your commute: you’ll be suggested actions like navigating to work on Google Maps or resuming an audiobook with Google Play Books. And when you put in headphones after work, you may see options to call your mom or start your favorite Spotify playlist.
Google also announced plans to introduce Slices which shows relevant information from favorite apps when needed.
“If you start typing “Lyft” into Google Search, you’ll see a “slice” of the Lyft app, showing prices for your ride home and the ETA for a driver so you can take action more quickly and easily.”
In Android 9, Google introduced a new system navigation featuring a single home button.
Google said this is especially helpful as phones grow taller and it’s more difficult to get things done on your phone with one hand. With a single, clean home button, you can swipe up to see a newly designed Overview, the spot where at a glance you have full-screen previews of your recently used apps.
You can also swipe up from anywhere to see full-screen previews of recently used apps and simply tap to jump back into one of them. If you find yourself constantly switching between apps on your Pixel, there is also Smart Text Selection which recognizes the meaning of the text you’re selecting and suggests relevant actions now works on the Overview of your recent apps, making it easier to perform the action you want. You can enable this new system navigation in Settings once you’ve received your update to Android 9.
Changing how you navigate your phone is a big deal, but small changes can make a big difference too. Android P also brings a redesigned Quick Settings, a better way to take and edit screenshots (say goodbye to the vulcan grip that was required before), simplified volume controls, an easier way to manage notifications and more. You’ll notice small changes like these across the platform, to help make the things you do all the time easier than ever.
