Android 9 Pie: Android is getting yummier than ever

And its finally official, Google has announced that Android 9 is going to be called Android Pie which is a sweet delight for all the Android users. Along with that it is also starts rolling out to the Pixel and Pixel 2 phones and essentials, so if you own this device you can start looking at the update section. So let’s look over all the features it brings to the table including a new navigation system and app overview, better notification and handling and much more. On top of everything Android Pie harnesses the power of machine learning which make your phone smarter, more simpler which can adapt as per your usage patterns and behavior with the phone, isn’t it cool !!

Talking about the visual changes, it completely revamped the entire navigation system and you will notice a visual refresh in its core material design with rounded corners and design being on the flatter side. Along with that it now introduces a single button navigation gesture which is part of the navigation system. It now totally relies upon some cool gestures to switch between apps and open the App drawer which looks and feels really awesome. Although it does take a little bit to get used to but you will like this feature once you will become familiar with it. On top of that all these swipe gestures are completely configurable and you can disable them in Settings which will bring back the old navigation system.

Now let’s talk about some of those AI settings that Google is implementing in Android Pie.

Adaptive Battery

You can play with this setting by going to Setting->Battery settings. It now makes note of the apps that use more battery than others and ones who uses frequently and prioritize the apps that you use more for a better battery life, so it should adapt over time and will improve battery performance overall.

Adaptive Brightness

You can go to this setting by going to Setting->Display setting. The adaptive brightness was already there and this time it got a bit of an update. So,what’s its going to do is it is going to remember your manual setting based on the amount of light, the conditions that you are in and then it will just go ahead and tweak it as time goes on. So, let’s say that you went out side in a brighter condition and increase the brightness to the max manually, Adaptive Brightness will remember this setting and the next time when you will step outside with the help of AI it will automatically increase the brightness.

App Actions

This feature is going to learn your usage of your phone and suggest specific actions based on your usage pattern and the actions will appear next to the app drawer.

Slices

It will come handy when go ahead and go the Google Search Bar and type a keyword lets say Lyft, then It will start showing all the details regarding that like how much it going to cost, how long it will take to reach to your location, so just different things and options within apps that you can customize and it will actually learn from you usage and behavior of your phone.

Auto Rotate

Another feature which did not get much attention is that when you rotate the phone horizontally you will notice a icon appearing next to the Home button and tapping on that will actually rotate the display horizontally and vice versa. This is also a very useful feature since most of us keep Auto Rotate turned off in the settings and to use an app or any specific page we need to turn the Auto Rotate back on again and remember to turn it Off again, which we forget to do most of the time, with this feature we can keep this problem at bay.

Also, aesthetically things have changed a bit too, clock is now on the upper left and upon swiping down the Quick settings are a little bit different as well, just overall icons are a bit round, the home launcher still has the Google Now setting as well.

Notifications

Android 9 makes notifications even more useful and more actionable. Messaging apps can take advantage of the new APIs to show conversations, attach photos and stickers, and even suggest smart replies. It will be able to use ML Kit to generate smart reply suggestions very soon for all the apps. Also, the contact images are shown within the thread, which makes it look really clean.

The ambient display also got a bit of an update, it now shows the time, date along with weather, if you have any notifications and down at the bottom you do have the battery percentage.

Text Magnifier

The Magnifier widget lets users precisely position the cursor or the text selection handles by viewing zoomed text through a draggable pane. You can attach it to any view that is attached to a window, so you can use it in custom widgets or during custom text-rendering. The Magnifier widget can also provide a zoomed-in version of any view or surface, not just text.

Security and Performance

• Biometric prompt

  Android 9 introduces a system-managed dialog to prompt the user for any supported type of biometric authentication. Apps no longer need to build their own dialog--instead they use the BiometricPrompt API to show the standard system dialog. In addition to Fingerprint (including in-display sensors), the API supports Face and Iris authentication.

• HTTPS Is the Default

  When you browse the internet, there are two protocols that a website can use: HTTP and HTTPS. The main difference between the two is that the latter is encrypted, which means your data is safe. Unfortunately, not all apps utilize this protocol for communication, which opens you to potential dangers. According to XDA, who discovered this back in March, all applications built for Android (starting with Android Pie) will send and receive data via HTTPS by default. This ensures your data is better protected as you communicate with the app's servers.

• Optimized for Kotlin

  Kotlin is a first-class language on Android. Google is providing all the supports and platforms it could for Kotlin and if you have not switched to Kotilin yet now its the best time to do this migration. In Android 9, there are several compiler optimizations, especially those that target loops, to extract better performance. Google is also continuing to work in partnership with JetBrains to optimize Kotlin's generated code. You can get all of the latest Kotlin performance improvements just by keeping Android Studio's Kotlin plugin up-to-date.

Get your apps ready for Android 9!