Google has made the Android P official today. The Google Pixel smartphones will be getting the Android P update anytime now. P stands for Pie as Google made it official. The developer previews of the Android P will come to an end today. As always, Google’s Pixel phones will be the very first ones to get the Android Pie update. It is time for the smartphone manufacturers to take action and update their flagship devices to Android P. We have already made a list of the phones that will likely get Android P. The Android Pie is coming with lots of goodies. Here is our list of the best features bundled inside the Android Pie.
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Android Pie – Best New Features
Black Status Bar for the notorious Notch
Not liking the notch trend set by the iPhone X and now being followed by every single Android manufacturer? It looks like Google is already working on a solution. The Android P will bring a black status bar. The status bar will be helpful to hide the notch on any Android phone. Let’s hope that Google doesn’t add a notch to its Pixel lineup now.
Circular elements for quick toggles
The toggles will are getting a new shape. You will find all the going inside the circles.
There is a new manage notifications button added in the notifications area. Pressing this button will take you to show you what applications are showing notifications. From this management area, you can control all the notifications showed by the applications installed on your phone.
This is another feature that Google has added after seeing it in the iPhone X. The Gesture Navigation gives you the navigation control in the form of a slider at the bottom of the display. Sliding, swiping, and pulling up this slider performs different operations. When the Gesture Navigation is enabled, it hides the typical navigation keys of the phone. The operations of this slider can be easily modified. In the default state, pressing the slider once opens the home screen, pulling the slider up opens the Google Now and sliding it opens recent applications.
When there is a page or application opened, from which you can go back to a previous screen, a small back button appears before the slider. The back button will not appear where the back operation is not required.
Adaptive Battery
Adaptive battery feature uses machine learning to identify the behavior of applications on your phone. It optimizes the battery depending on the usage patterns of the applications.
Adaptive Brightness
Adaptive brightness reads the display usage patterns for a particular application running on your phone. It then changes the brightness automatically whenever you open that application.
App Actions & Slices
Whenever you tend to long-tap an application, it will automatically suggest you the most frequently performed actions. For example, you recently texted a friend, tapping the messaging application will give you a shortcut to directly message that friend again.
Slices feature is an extended form of App Actions. It is suitable for applications like Uber and Lyft. The slices feature will show you details along with the app action. For example, you want to book a ride to your home through Uber, Uber will show you a ride to your home through the app actions and it will show you the details of the route with the help of the slices feature. It means you will be able to take a look at the distance, the time and the cost on the go.
Till Android Oreo, pressing the volume rocker controls the volume of the phone unless the music player is running. From Android P, pressing the volume button will control the media volume by default. A shortcut above the Volume slider has been added to change the phone’s mode to vibration or silent.
Put the phone on vibration using a shortcut
You don’t have to unlock your phone and reduce the volume or pull the notification bar to put your phone on vibration now. Simply pressing the Power and the Volume Up button will put your phone on the vibration mode.
Shush
Shush is like an advanced “Do Not Disturb” mode. When you put your phone on the screen down, it will not ring for any call. You can select your desired contacts to ring through when the shush mode is working. It will also let the phone ring if a caller calls your more than one time within a span of 15 minutes.
Wind Down
Google has a solution for the people who cannot sleep because of their phone’s screens. The Wind Down feature works intelligently to turn your phone’s screen grey when it’s time to sleep. You can define the time when you want the Wind Down feature to work.
Android Dashboard
Android Dashboard gives you a very nice visual graph of your activities on the phone. It shows you how much time do you spend on an application. It also shows you your usage patterns. This is a very nice addition if you are looking to manage your time. You can use this feature to cut down your time from social media applications. Android Dashboard also shows you all the notifications you receive in a day.
App Timer
Want to restrict yourself from using Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter? App Timer is going to help you. When the App Timer is enabled for an application, it automatically locks you out of that application for your defined time. For example, you are using Facebook and you want to stop using it after 20 minutes, you can set this time in App Timer and it will lock you out of Facebook once your 20 minutes have been consumed.
New screenshot method
There is no need to experiment with the Volume and Power keys to take a screenshot anymore. Simply long press the power button and it will show you the screenshot option alongside the power options now. This is how simple Google has made it to take a screenshot now.
New screen rotation option
Rotating the screen has become a lot easier now. When you rotate the phone in landscape mode, it will show you a small rotation button next to the navigation keys. You can tap that button if you want the display to rotate in the landscape mode too. This means you don’t have to disable and enable the Autorotate mode again and again now.
Google search bar placement
Google has once again changed the placement of the search bar. It has pushed the search bar a little bit down making it easy for one-hand users to access it.
Smart Text Selection available for all apps now
Previously, the smart text selection feature was available for Google exclusive and only a few other applications. Google has now opened this feature for everyone. The smart text selection enables a user to perform actions on a text. For example, when you select an address in a text, it will show you an option to look for that address on maps and when you select a phone number, it will give you the option to call that number.
I will update this post as I come across more new features of the Android Pie.
