AI Fills the Android Pie

We are seeing AI become a more accepted part of our everyday lives. It is being used for everything from spam filters in the email to autopilot systems on commercial flights. From social media to credit checking, as AI becomes more advanced, its uses continue to expand. The new Android operating system, recently released by Google, gets a healthy dose of AI. Version 9 is known as Android Pie, and it uses AI to learn from the user’s behavior and customize the experience.

Google’s vice president of product management, Sameer Samat, said, “From predicting your next task so you can jump right into the action you want to take, to prioritizing battery power for the apps you must use, to helping you disconnect from your phone at the end of the day, Android 9 adapts to your life and the ways you like to use your phone.”

‘Google Android Amigurumi’ – Kham Tran via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

AI Makes Pie Smarter

Google has included lots of helpful ways for AI to improve your overall experience of its newest operating system. Among them is a smart battery optimizer, which learns your usage patterns and ensures your phone is always optimized. BETA users saw up to a 20% increase in battery life according to ABI research. If you adjust the brightness manually for different environments the phone will learn your preferences and start automatically adjusting the phone to your preferred brightness.

Despite promising early results some people are still a little more skeptical. Tuong Nguyen, a senior principal analyst at Gartner, said, “We see a lot of power optimization announcements and I’m sure they work well enough, but my perception as a consumer is that I can never stay sufficiently charged and am always using too much battery.”

‘A black mobile phone and charger’ – Ready Elements via Flickr (CCO 1.0)

It’s not just the operating systems

While the operating systems that run our phones are growing ever more sophisticated, so are the apps we download to them. The Android system saw an increase in the number of apps featuring AI when Google decided to allow paid gambling apps in the Play store. While Google regulates the companies allowed to offer such apps, it has opened the Play store up to several genuine casino apps that use AI technology, many of which try to attract users by offering extras, such as a no deposit bonus. Adventure games, puzzles, and lifestyle apps have all started to incorporate AI to help improve the user experience.

It’s not all plain sailing

At the moment Android Pie is only available to users who own phones that participated in the BETA program. This means Samsung users will have to wait a while longer before playing with the latest version of Android. With multi-camera and HEIF support, better security, and time management features designed to help fight phone addiction, we think it will be a hit with the users lucky enough to already have access. If it is a hit then don’t expect Google to hang about migrating it to other manufacturers.