Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Android P hands-on: Google’s most ambitious update”.
(, electronic music ), Google I/O, is here, and that means we finally know what’s happening with Android P. Company’s focusing on three things: A simpler interface, an intelligent interface and this thing they’re calling “ digital, well being”. What’S that all about (, electronic music )? So the new Android P beta should be available pretty much right away on a whole bunch of devices like seven or nine devices.. It’S on the Google Pixel 2 XL, which I have here..
You can also get it on a OnePlus 6 Nokia phones, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway. I wan na show you the most obvious thing, you’re gon na see on this beta of Android P, because, oh, my god, they took the home button away..
So what you do is you give it a little swipe up and that takes you to the overview screen.. All of your apps are listed horizontally. Here.
They’re even live, so you can like long press on something and have it do a search for that thing or copy the text or whatever, which is kind of cool.. If you give it a longer swipe up or a second swipe up, it takes you to all of your apps. And it lists your most-used apps or sorry, the AI-detected apps, what they think you’re gon na wan na use right there at the top., And that’s also In this half swipe up down here at the bottom, which is pretty neat., There’s a little tab also for your work apps..
So if you really want to, you can just turn those damn things off because who wants work? Apps One last little clever thing with that button. If you just slide it over to the right, you can get to that list of your most recent apps to jump into them.. So it’s a really quick way to switch between apps. And then, of course, when you’re in an app the home button is there.
To go home, you can just tap it to go home. And the good old back button. Is there too, if you want the back button. Notifications, things are basically the same, but there are some really nice updates..
So if you start dismissing stuff a bunch eventually it’ll ask you: if you just wan na stop seeing those notifications., You can long press on a notification instead of remembering that weird little swipe over to get to settings. And then there’s just a plain old “ manage Notifications” button at the bottom., When you tap on that it takes you to a list of your most recent notifications and then you can just turn those things off because they’ve been annoying, you lately., So it’s a much faster way to handle notifications.. Now this is just some of the stuff on Android P. There’s a lot more., There’s all the stuff about digital, well, being there’s a bunch of AI stuff., And so I want to talk about that stuff.
Now. (, chill electronic music ). Now, because this is Google and because Google can’t string more than five words together without saying the words “ AI”, we’re talking about AI again., AI is built into Android in a few different ways.
There’s a new machine-learning kit, so that you can make your own intelligent. Apps and that works on both Android and iOS actually., But in Android itself AI is gon na watch. What apps you use and then shut them down intelligently to save battery life..
It’S also gon na adjust your brightness automatically for you.. I don’t know saying that. That’S AI feels a little bit buzz-wordy and a little bit overkill, but it should hopefully give you better battery life in the end.. What are some of the things that are more intelligent, that’s happening on the phone now Right and so there’s. The whole premise of this is, you know we think smart. We call them smart phones, but you know what they could be a lot smarter.
Okay., (, laughs, ), And they could be a lot more intelligent and you know what does that mean? Well, in our case, it’s really, we think the phone should adapt to you.. One area that we’ve worked on, which I like a lot, is what we call “ adaptive battery”, It’s a project we did with DeepMind.. It uses on-device machine learning to figure out which apps you’re gon na launch next and which ones you’re not gon na launch for a couple hours and which you may not do’til the evening. If at all., That’s one example., Another is auto brightness..
Now, in pretty much every modern, smart phone today we’ll look at it has a light sensor and it will adjust the brightness depending on the light., But it doesn’t take into account you’re preferences right Or your environment., And so what we’ve done? It’Ll actually learn how you move the brightness given different lighting conditions, and then it will do it for you.. So one of the things that Google’s doing in Android P is they’re. Introducing these new terms. There’s a “ slice” and there’s an “, action” And they’re.
Basically, deep links, which means that an app has got something you want to do deep down inside the app, but you wan na do it somewhere else in the operating system.. So if you do a search for Lyft, it just surfaces, a link to just go home and it jumps right into the app to do that. Or if you want. If you are opening up your app drawer, there’s a couple little things inside the app row at the top that lets you jump right into some action.
You do all the time., Like you know, call your significant other or open up Seamless when you get home because, let’s be honest, you’re gon na open up Seamless when you get home., You’re lazy as hell.. Those are all the whizbang features that are gon na, make you more productive with your phone and use your phone more and they’re all great., But Google’s doing this whole other thing, that’s designed to get you to use your phone less. Digital well being for us, is A theme is a set of capabilities, we’re putting into Android to help people become more aware of how they’re, using their device. And then be in control, have a set of controls where they can decide how they want to change that behavior.. So one of the ways you’re doing that is you have this thing.? What do you call it? The dashboard [ Sameer ] Yeah, there’s a dashboard.. Is it just a lot more checkboxes for people to have to look at Like? Are you finding that people are actually finding value in this thing? The first step is awareness.
And that dashboard is pretty straight forward.. It shows you how much time you spent on your phone each day what apps you spent that time in how many times you unlocked your phone, how many notifications, you’ve received. And then it lets you drill down on those things. And then the next piece of it Is okay? So how can the software help me if I want to change my behavior? So that’s where we’re putting a bunch of capabilities, we’re calling you know user controls., So you can set a time limit on the amount of time you want to spend in an app., And so I could say, for example, I only wan na spend thirty minutes a Day in YouTube, or in Instagram or my favorite game, maybe Subway Surfer right And another situation that we find people really talked to us. A lot about was trying to be fully present for something. And the phone, perhaps not helping with that., So Do Not Disturb’s being improved where I can …
When I turn on Do Not Disturb now, all the visual interruptions go away., So it doesn’t show notifications on Lock screen., Not only does it not vibrate, it doesn’t show anything at all., No vibrations., Basically no interruptions.. So after that really brief, look at Android P. What do I think? Well, I’m kind of hopeful..
I really love the idea of exploding apps out into the rest of the phone so that you can just do a search and jump right to the thing you wan na do. And I’m really intrigued by the idea of using apps less’cause. I don’t know I use Twitter way too much.
If you take those two ideas together. What’S really interesting is Google’s trying to set up a system where you think about your phone less., Both because it does stuff for you automatically through AI and because you just use your phone less., And maybe we could all stand to do that.. But even though I’m hopeful that doesn’t mean I’m naive. Android has a huge update problem.
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