Android Pie officially launched: Here's how to get it
Three months after its announcement, the much-awaited Android P has finally been launched. Dubbed Android Pie, Google's latest mobile OS was made available for its Pixel smartphones from Monday, while other eligible Android devices will get the update fairly soon. Although Pie sounds like an underwhelming name compared to Marshmallow, Nougat, and Oreo, Android Pie has a lot to offer. Here's all you need to know.
When you can expect to get Android Pie
As for availability apart from Pixel phones, Android P Beta program participants, and those who have Android One devices are expected to get Android Pie by the end of fall this year. Earlier, Google had announced that Android P would focus on the three areas of intelligence, simplicity and digital well-being, and Android Pie's features are focused specifically on those areas.
Major intelligence features offered by Android Pie
Android P, in terms of intelligence, has refined features like adaptive battery and adaptive brightness to optimize your phone performance. In addition, new features like App Action predicts which apps you're likely to use at a given time of the day or at a particular location, and puts those apps on top of the app drawer, or Slices, which offers other important real-time data.
Google has added novel digital well-being features in Android P
Measures to improve digital well-being include a new dashboard that contains information about how much time you spend using specific apps. Additionally, timers can be set to limit your daily usage. Android's Do-Not-Disturb mode now works for both sound and notifications, and Google has added a Wind Down feature that turns on night light, DND, and turns the screen black-and-white when it's bedtime.
A major change has been made to Android's navigation bar
As far as simplicity is concerned, Google has changed Android's age-old three-button navigation bar, and made it more akin to iOS. Android P users will be able to swipe up to see recent apps, and swipe up again to see their entire app drawer. Users can navigate between apps by pressing the tiny "pill" at the bottom of the screen to go home.
You might have to wait for digital well-being features
It's important to note, however, that Android Pie's digital well-being tools are currently only available on Pixel smartphones as optional beta settings. The tools are expected to be officially released on a wider range of devices later this fall.
Other tweaks on Android P worth mentioning
Other changes include small visual tweaks like moving the volume bar to the side of the phone, reducing clutter in the quick settings panel with circular button, and improvements to how the Smart Text Selection tool works. Additionally, with many Android device makers adopting the iPhone X's notched display, Google has added support for the notch in Android P.
