what's going on everyone Mitesh here with mtech and today we're gonna be
taking a look at Android P on my pixel 2. I just got the update for the beta
version and yeah there's a bunch of new things like the gesture navigation that
we're gonna take a look at in this video. If you guys are new here on this channel
I make weekly videos covering technology, doing product reviews and how-to videos
so if that sounds like something you're interested in go ahead and hit that subscribe
button so you guys don't miss my next video but with that out o f the way let's
get to this.
So we're talking about new things in Android P we're really talking
about the gesture navigation that Google just introduced at their Google i/o
events. So gesture navigation is basically gonna replace the three
buttons that we've known on Android for like the past five years, so we've had
the back home and multitasking button but with the new gesture navigation
we're no longer going to have the multitasking button, instead there's a
weird white space there that functionally serves a purpose but
aesthetically it kind of looks weird, but we'll get into that in a little bit.
So gestures may sound some familiar to you because they were also in an iPhone
10 which has no home button and they now use gestures to get around the UI and
pixels sort of does the same thing. Now by default the gesture navigation is off
and you will need to turn it on in the setting so you'll go to settings->
system->gestures and then you'll click on swipe up on home and then you can turn
that on and that'll get rid of the multitasking button and give you a
little a bigger home button that looks more like a pill. Now with that button
you'll be able to do a bunch of new things so you'll be able to swipe up on
that home button to bring in your multitasking view and in this one you
can see as multitasking views to change quite a bit. So now it's a horizontal
list versus a vertical list as it was before and you can use a new home button
as a way to scrub through the different apps that are open or you can just swipe
through it as you'd normally would. So the ability to scrub through the list of
apps that you have open is the reason that you have that space on the right
side it still looks weird to me aesthetically but I can understand why
it's there additionally it brings you something
really nice. So previously you could double tap the multitasking button just
quickly switch between apps and now you can just swipe to the right on the home
button and it'll bring up the last app that was open so you can just quickly do
that it's like a spring-loaded button that you swipe to the right and It'll
just pull back in last out that you had loaded so I'm glad they were able to
keep that functionality. One of the other things this changes is
how you're able to do split screen apps on the device, so before you
can just hold down the multitasking button it'll bring up the UI to do
split-screen apps but now if you try to long press the home button
you'll instead get assistance, so the way split-screen apps work now is now you
go to that overview menu, that multitasking menu, and then you click on
the little top icon that you have for the app and then when you click on that
you'll get a little drop-down of all the things that it can do you can pin the
app but you can also do a split screen from there so you click that you can get
that app and then you pick another app to put in the bottom screen so yeah it
still works it's a little bit slower now which I don't like but it is still there.
Some of you might be wondering how do you get to the app drawer now or is it gone
completely. Well it's still there, the way you get to the app drawer now is you
swipe up to go to the overview of a menu or the multitasking view and then you
swipe up one more time it'll take you to the app drawer now another way to get to
it if you just do a long swipe you can go directly to the app drawer so yeah
the app drawer is still there and still works the same we just have maybe a
little longer to get to it additionally they do give you five apps
they predict that you're going to want to use when you go to that multitasking
view so hopefully you don't need to open their app drawer as much it's something
that we'll just have to see whether it's annoying or it's convenient.
Alright so opinion time: how do I feel about the gesture navigation I think
that it is really fluid and it's really easy to get used to though it does make
some compromises like that space on the right side which I just don't feel like
they've done it as well as the iPhone has. Now the iPhone never had a back
button and yeah I like having the back one on Android and it's nice that they
kept it but it looks weird now it's off it's asymmetrical and yeah in the end I
just think they haven't quite done it as well as the iPhone has. I wish that they
would maybe make that back button just a gesture as well so that we can just have
one button that does everything. This is something that Motorola experimented
with with their phones they have actually touch pads which you can use to
swipe around with gestures versus doing the traditional buttons just layout it
would be nice if they could do something like that I think Motorola was on the
right track with having a touch pad that did obviously what you wanted to except
just having a virtual button to do it and said so yeah I'm still pretty
excited for gesture navigation I think it was long overdue I think it's much
better UI than having buttons. I know it's not, for some people, as fast
for me it just feels more fluid and I think it's the right way to go. But yeah
that's pretty much all you're gonna see that's really brand new and developer
preview 2. All the other stuff that they had was the same as Developer
Preview one if you guys are interested in stuff in that I did make another
video about it so you guys can check it out I'll have a linked up here in the
cards so you guys can see that video if you want to see what else is new.
Some of the other few things that they have in this preview is they have app
actions. So app action so our actions are these new things they introduced in
Android P and what it is is direct links inside of apps to things that they think
you'll want to do so for me it showed me call mom and to go to pocket cast from
new release podcasts so those are things that I do often at around the time that
I filmed this and yeah I normally call my mom when I'm driving home from work
so it's there and then I also go ahead and use pocket casts to listen to
podcasts so it knows me well and it knows that what to do with those now
those things are direct links into the app so even if I was somewhere else in
the app when I click that pocket cast new release button it'll take me to
the new releases page where I can see all the new podcasts that are out and
when I click call mom it'll immediately start calling her. Now I still
think it's strange that it's in the app drawer versus being somewhere outside of
it but it is where it is. So another new thing that they introduced during Google
i/o for Android P is something a new initiative they're going with called
digital well being. This is a bunch of different new things and Android to help
you live your life better so you can maybe put down your device and actually
step away and get back into a regular life. Now some of these sound really
interesting so, there's a couple, there's three main things to it. There's the
app dashboard and this is going to show you what you are doing with your phone
so it's gonna show you all the time you spend in certain apps what you're doing
inside those apps and things like that so I think it could be really useful
especially for those of us who want to know if we're wasting time on our phones
so I know me personally I spend way too much time on reddit and I know this
already and I would love to be able to quantify it so I'm kind of excited for
this one at least is to know where I'm spending my time and see if I could
spend my time better. Another thing that they introduced is is app timer so you can
set yourself a limit on how long you want to spend in an app.
So for example if you're someone who's on Facebook or Instagram all the time
you can go ahead and set a limit of like fifteen or thirty minutes and after that
it won't let you use the app at all so after you've used the app for fifteen or
thirty minutes it won't let you back in there at all which i think is gonna
annoy some people but i think it's actually a really good thing especially
to step away from those apps for me like reddit if I can step away from that it
would be great. And then the third thing we have is something called wind down so
what this is is you set yourself a bedtime so you say yourself like tell
Google that you wanted to go to try to go to bed by 11 o'clock and then at 11
o'clock they'll turn the screen black and white and won't turn back until then
the next morning. I think it's an interesting way to let you try to get to
bed at the right time, you know me personally I've had a hard time trying
to go to bed 11 sometimes I'm just in bed just looking at my phone which is
stupid when I could just be going to sleep but yeah so this is a way to help
you manage your time better, to help you do things that are good for you and yeah
I'm really excited for those none of those things are out yet, and once they
are out I will definitely be making another video to tell you guys what my
experience is like using them so yeah make sure you guys are subscribed so you
guys don't miss that one and with that that's pretty much all I have for you
guys in this one I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you did go ahead and hit that like button
and yeah thank you guys so much for watching I'll catch you guys the next
one. Peace.