#GoogleI/O2018: Top 5 Android P Features

Photos: Google

Google's 2018 I/O keynote developer conference took off yesterday, May 8, at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, California, United States, and most of the buzz was centered around what the company's next Android OS, Android P will offer.

While Google focused majorly on core UI changes and aesthetics on last year's Android Oreo, the focus this year for the tech giant was visual UI design and AI. Android P offers an abundance of AI features, third-party app integration features, more UI refinement and new ways to navigate and multitask between applications.

Google also announced a bunch of new updates coming to Google apps like Google Lens, Maps, News and more. Here are the top announcements from day one of Google I/O 2018 keynote developer conference starting with Android P key features:

Digital Well-being

Google's new Digital Well-being on Android P is a number of new clean features that will help you use your phones less. Google recognises the fact that users these days gets fixated on their smartphones and hardly do away with them and it is trying to address that. So, how is Google planning to achieve this you may ask!. Well, here is how;

Photo: Android (Twitter)

First; is the new "Dashboard," screen, giving you at-a-glance details on how much time you've spent on which apps, how many times you've unlocked your phone, and how many notifications you've had pop up. Per-app details are also available, and developers will be able to implement these in their apps. 

Then you have "App Timer" and "Wind Down". For App timer, you tell it how much time you wish to spend on a particular app within the day, and the software will nudge you if that limit is reached. That app's icon will remain grayed out for the rest of the day. The gray colour is to remind you that you shouldn't use the app anymore for that day, even though you still can.

Wind Down, however is one that turns the screen to black and white at a predefined time at night. Since black-and-white images are less stimulating for the brain, the best option will be to put the phone away... Tada!

Lastly is the new Do-not-Disturb mode. This is a neat feature that will allow you filter or mute notifications. One cool way to enable it now is just by placing your smartphone face down on a table.

"App Actions" and "Slices"

These are new features introduced to help with better mobile app integration, especially between third-party apps and Search or Google Assistant. The "Actions" feature are like shortcuts that let a user quickly access a deeper function of an app with the touch of a button or a voice command. This can be like calling a Lyft ride home or booking a movie ticket for cinemas.

Google says Actions can be created for any third-party app, and they’ll live in Android P’s search bar, in the Play Store, within Assistant, and in a customizable fashion on your home screen.



Slices, however, are UI designs from third-party apps that will exist, for now, only within the Android P search bar when you go looking for an action like that Lyft ride home. In this case, Android will surface the Lyft icon and the design of the actual app, and not just a mediation of it by way of the OS. This new integration system will make switching between apps less frequent, a task which can be overwhelming at times.

New Navigation Gestures

Google has ditched the traditional navigation soft-keys on Android P,.. well, not entirely. For instance, the Back and Home buttons still appear when you are in any app while the Home button now doubles as a slider for scrolling through recent apps.

The somewhat removal of the softkeys means a shift to new gesture movements to navigate through your device, much like what we saw with the iPhone X from Apple. Below is a few commands for Android P new gestures;

• Tap: go to home screen

• Long press: launch Google Assistant

• Half swipe up: go to overview screen

• Full swipe up: go to app drawer

• Slide to right: scroll through recent apps

• Back button: go back (only appears inside apps)

This will take a little time to get used when Android P finally makes its way to a number of Android Smartphones later this year.

"Adaptive Battery"

Google brings a new AI feature to Android's battery management system called “Adaptive Battery" on Android P. The new AI will monitor your phone’s battery consumption and will shut down apps running in the background that you haven’t touched for a while. It will also adjust your phone’s brightness based on your habits.

Project "Treble"

Well, this is not exactly a feature on the Android P but a project to get updates - starting with Android P - faster to third-party smartphones, other than the Pixel. Treble is a fundamental rearchitecting of how Android is built and customized. The theory goes that the core features of Android could be updated and the skin on top would be kept separate, speeding up updates. 

The other theory is that by working with chipmakers, like Qualcomm, earlier in the development process, Google could help actual phone manufacturers release their updates faster.

There are several other litte neat tricks and features added to Android P and to be honest, this is just a tip of the iceberg for what is to come from Google regarding Android P, and Android in general. It should only get better from here.

What are your thoughts on the new Android P features? Let's know in the comments!