The new version of Android is here and it's as easy as pie. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech and yes, back after a short vacation, Google released the final version of Android nine, Android P as it's called, and they revealed what the PEE stands for, which is pie. So what's new. Well, I've been using the beta version on my pixel to XL for a while now, and the final update actually improved from the lagginess myself and others have experienced on this device. Now.
I'm still sort of disappointed that this phone is not even a year old and it still seems slow compared to the iPhone ten and other devices. But Android nine definitely sped things up just a little bit. So let's talk about Android nine. It's not a dramatic change from what you're used to, but there are some big differences to talk about, especially things under the hood that should
make life just a little bit easier for starters. Google says there is even more artificial intelligence built in, and that's pretty clear. Your phone basically learns how you use it and adapts accordingly. Two big areas for this battery and brightness. We're always trying to squeeze more battery out of our devices, and now Android P can help. It will notice which apps that you aren't using and it
will put them into a very deep sleep. This way, they don't gobble up your battery in the background, and it does this intelligently. When it comes to screen brightness, Android P takes an interesting approach. While you've always been able to manually override Android's automatic brightness settings, this time around your phone kind of takes notice of what you do with your brightness. So, for instance, maybe you want your phone screen to stay a little bit brighter in
a dark room. The automatic brightness controls will take this into consideration when it does the adjusting the next time around. Does that make sense? So if you are in a dark room a lot and you keep putting the brightness up, your phone will start to notice that, and eventually it will keep the brightness at a pretty bright level because it knows that's the way you like it. It's a little thing, but that's pretty smart. Now when it comes to navigating
your phone, you're gonna notice a very big difference. There is only one button now at the bottom of your screen instead of three, So most of the time you're just going to see a little home button. Then when you need it, you're gonna see a back button show up. If you want to get to your recent apps, you have to swipe up on the home button and then all of your apps are now shown as individual cards. You can swipe them away like you used to, and there also is an option to clear all, which is
my personal favorite. Just like on the iPhone, you can toggle between your last two apps by just swiping at the bottom of the screen. That's a nice gesture. Or you can press hold and swipe to go between all of your recent apps. I know it sounds complicated. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but you will get used to it and it kind of works. I'm not a huge fan of it right now, but eventually I'm sure I'll get used to it and forget
about the old way. You also have the ability to split screen your apps, and if you want to get to your drawer of all of your apps, that now now kind of takes two actions instead of just swiping up once. That will now just bring up what Android thinks are the apps that you want to use. Next, you have to swipe up again to see all of your apps. I know it's another thing that you're gonna have to get used to, but you will eventually. When you do swipe up to see all of your apps,
you will notice a new feature called app actions. These are little shortcut buttons dynamically generated based on what Android thinks you want to do. Next. You see that theme here Android artificial intelligence. They're really trying to predict what the user is doing to make things simpler. For instance, right now, my app actions show two there's a shortcut to play a recent playlist I played on Spotify, or another one touch to text my sister who I was
texting earlier in the morning. Now, I think these are too buried to be truly useful. Perhaps if they showed up on the home screen they might get more use, or even when you swipe up that first time to see your suggested apps, if they appeared there, that might be a better place for them as well. Cool feature I've seen in Action is called smart text selection. This builds on what Android used to have, like when you select text like an address, and it would say stuff
like maps. Well, now it's gotten even smarter, so when you select text, Android will attempt to understand the context of that text and surface an appropriate action in addition to the typical cut, copy paste, and web search. So if you select a phone number, it will bring up an instant action to call that number. If you select an address, it will bring up an instant action to bring that up in maps, and if you highlight a restaurant name, it will bring up an option to open
it and yelp, which I find very handy. So that's really smart, really useful, and I love that feature. Now, the feature you might be most interested in isn't actually built into Android nine just yet. It's called Digital well Being, and you actually have to sign up for it separately right now to get the beta on your device. Now I've done that, and the insights you get from Digital Wellbeing are really interesting. For starters, it will tell you
how long you've spent on your device. Then it will break down how long you've spent into percentages and times for individual apps. Then you can drill down even further and see how long you've spent on an app every day of the week. Yeah, you're gonna be surprised here. For instance, yesterday I was on a plane all day. I spent five hours and one minute on my phone with eighty nine on locks and four hundred and eighty six notifications. Who didn't realize I got that many. But
that includes all your texts and stuff like that. It says I spent the most time on YouTube, then Instagram and Twitter, and YouTube was kind of an abnormality yesterday because I was watching a lot of YouTube on the plane. So I get that. But what can you do with all this data? Well, for starters, you can set time limits for individual apps, so your phone, once you reach that time limit will keep you from using that particular app. I'm gonna try setting an hour for starters on Instagram
and Facebook just to see what happens. But once you're locked out, you can always override the lockout if you want. Other things that Digital well Being does. It turns your phone gray scale at night at a time you choose, so this helps you wind down for bed. This happened to me last night. It made my phone so boring because everything was grayscale. I didn't want to look at Instagram or anything else, so I guess it kind of worked. Again. You can disable this if you don't want it. And
this is in addition to nightlight. That's the feature that kind of turns your screen a yellow hue. It filters out blue light so it doesn't keep your brain going. Apparently, I use that feature from sunrise to sunset. The grayscale feature is in addition to that, you can also have digital wellbeing stop visual notifications from appearing on your screen during the wind down hours. That's just set. Basically, Google is trying to get you to use your phone just
a little bit less and use it a little bit smarter. Overall, Android P is a nice advance for the operating system. Nothing too dramatic, but it is helpful in lots of little ways. So when will you see it on your phone? Well, if you have a pixel, you can get it right now. But if you're rocking a pixel, something tells me you've already downloaded the new software. So for the rest of you, you can get the Android P Beta on select devices from Sony, show Me, Nokia, Opo, Vivo OnePlus, and Essential.
But for the phones from the big manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola, and LG, it looks like you're still gonna have to wait. Usually it can take a few months for an update to hit your handset. Now, speaking of Samsung. I am in New York City for the launch of the upcoming Galaxy Note nine. I will have full details on that device very soon in the podcast, but if you want minute by minute updates, follow me on Instagram. There I'm Rich on Tech, and on Twitter I'm at Rich DeMuro.
Thanks so much for listening. I'm Rich Demurro. I'll talk to you real soon.