Best Android Pie Features That Makes Me Excited

Android 9.0 Pie has officially rolled out, but for the time being, it's only available to Google's own Pixel phones and a select few others, you lock out to test the best android p features. Thankfully, you can get a taste of the Android Pie experience on any phone right now.

The newest version of Android is here! Named Pie, it introduces some cool new tricks that will change the way you use Android. These are welcome additions after the last few versions of Android brought mostly small tweaks.

Due to Android’s fragmentation, Pie will slowly roll out to devices in the coming months and won’t look exactly the same on every one.

Whether you’ve downloaded already or are looking forward to it, here are the best new features in Android Pie you must know about

So if you'd like to experience the sounds of Android Pie, you've come to the right place.

Dashboard

It’s easy to lose track of time while you are glued to your phone watching YouTube videos, playing games, or checking out social media. This is why Google has introduced a bunch of features that let you control how you use your phone.

One of them is ‘Dashboard’ which breaks downs phone usage data to show how you spend time on your device. It displays:

• a pie chart indicating the time spent in each app per day and also in hour by hour basis
• total number of hours spent on the phone each day
• number of times you unlocked your phone
• total number of notifications you have received

Adaptive Features

Android has made our lives easier with its automated features, and now, Pie makes them smarter by introducing Adaptive Battery and Adaptive Brightness.

Android 6 introduced Doze, which restricts battery juice to all non-used apps. Android 9 takes it a step further by learning your app usage and optimizing the battery power for the most-used apps, allowing more battery time per charge. You can configure this feature at Settings > Battery > “Adaptive Battery“.

In a similar way, Adaptive Brightness learns about your brightness preferences and configure the screen brightness magically per your surroundings. You only require adjusting the brightness slider, and it will slowly learn your preferences. You can enable/disable it at Settings > Display > “Adaptive Brightness“.

App Actions

App Actions are another of the smart functions of Android Pie. Though you may have seen the app shortcuts on long-pressing icons, App Actions enhances your experience by predicting your next tasks. The feature is an improvement over the app suggestions shown by Google’s launcher or third-party launchers.

App Actions are smart ways for assisting you to do what you need quickly. For instance, you may see a shortcut to start navigation in Google Maps in the morning if you use the navigation to drive to your office. It may suggest your favorite music app or a set of playlists when you connect the earphones.

App Slices

App Slices are an add-on over App Actions — they bring you the most important features of an app without opening the app itself. For example, if you search for “Lyft” in the Google Search, an App Slice of Lyft (the ride-hailing app) may show you estimated prices and times for known locations (like home and work).

Interestingly, App Slices are interactive. For instance, you can work with the Lyft’s App Slice from the searches. That means you can select the cab options as well as the location for your ride and book a cab directly from the App Slice.

Security Features

Android 9 brings various privacy and security features to the popular mobile platform. First and foremost of all, “Android will restrict access to your phone’s microphone, camera, or other sensors when an app is idle or running in the background”, according to Google. Secondly, there is my favorite feature.

Lockdown — or as I like to call it — Device Lockdown is a lock screen feature to lock down your device. It disables notifications on the lock screen and disables unlocking using one of the fingerprint and Smart Lock. That means you must use your password, pattern, or PIN to unlock the device. Doesn’t it feel secure?

You can enable this feature by going to Settings > “Security & location” >“Lock screen preferences” and toggling on the option named “Show lockdown option“. Once enabled, long-press the power button and tap Lockdown to use it.

Media Improvements

Android 9 has many tricks up its sleeve, and it features many sound and volume improvements among them. For example, it shows the volume slider on the right side instead of the top as shown in the previous versions. It shows just a single slider to adjust the media volume (de facto) instead of the ringer volume.

You can have up to five devices connected to your device simultaneously and choose anyone to handle your calls if supported. Moreover, your phone can remember the volume setting for each connected device individually, unlike before.

Notifications Control

Android Pie offers better control and reporting of the notifications. In previous versions, you needed to rely on third-party apps to check on the notification limit offenders, which was uncommon. Thus, apps usually distract you. That is not the case with the Pie — it offers built-in reporting of distracting apps.

You can check out the misbehaving apps sending distracting notifications at Settings > “Apps & notifications” > Notifications. In the section “Recently sent“, click “See all…” to see the latest apps to send you notifications. Here, you can also switch to “Most frequent” to see the apps with most notifications.

Finally, there is an improved Do Not Disturb as well. Previously, it used to mute the notification sounds, but in the Pie, it hides the notifications as well

Dark theme

In the past, Google automatically applied a dark or light theme based on the wallpaper’s color tone. But Android P features a notable option to manually change from different themes.

Under the display advanced settings, you can select whichever theme you prefer. Again, the theme settings will only apply to the app drawer and the notification shade.

Over To You

Yes you heard it right, over to you, there are almost many android pie features out there, may be you’ve yours too. Well, the above ones are my favorite’s features in Android 9.0 Pie. What is yours? Please leave your comment below.