LWN: Comments on "Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)"

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

Wol — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 09:35:39 +0000

Great, until you actually want a low-light picture and your phone gives you a bright-as-daylight one instead. I had this problem with my DSLR, but it's easy to fix there :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

Wol — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 09:33:20 +0000

Exactly :-)

My other big moan at Android at the moment is the contacts app. Which seemingly does not know the difference between "All Contacts" and "My Contacts". Case in point - I select a contact, go in to change the groups. I *actively* *delete* "my contacts" from the list, only for Android to put it straight back when I save the changes!

And I'm trying to get my wife to use Duo, but so far the only advice I've had about stopping contacts showing up in Duo's list is "delete them from your contacts". Which is fine, except both me and my wife have loads of contacts we need - for work and social - that we really don't want anything to do with in our private life. So we *don't* want them showing up in Duo just asking to be fat-finger called!

Cheers,
Wol

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

anselm — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 09:03:22 +0000

Surely that will not apply to those apps that either Google, your handset manufacturer, or your mobile phone service provider have in their infinite wisdom preinstalled on your behalf?

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

dtlin — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 20:11:50 +0000

Google's Files Go app (the only Android Go app to be available on non-Go devices, as far as I can tell) will prompt you to delete large and unused apps. Seemingly no AI required :)

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

dfsmith — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 19:07:52 +0000

>They've got some seriously cool software running with the "AI" chip that creates pictures that the camera hardware shouldn't be capable of providing.

This is a little troubling. It won't be long until the AI can 'take' a picture of you at your location without you even having to get the phone out of your pocket. Great for an alibi though....

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

khim — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 17:54:38 +0000

Hey, internally it was known as "pi" before release - that was even funnier.

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

Wol — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 14:13:53 +0000

Or "something strange"?

Cheers,
Wol

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

Wol — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 14:12:47 +0000

I just wish that "deep neural net" could identify which apps I'm unlikely to use in a million years (most of them) and delete them!

In a world of information overload, the last thing I need is Android pushing stuff at me ...

Cheers,
Wol

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

jani — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 17:11:51 +0000

Quark perhaps? More likely to be "something sweet"? ;)

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

jmanig — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 13:39:03 +0000

I'm pretty sure it's a joke, poking fun at Google's recent insitence on emulating Apple's user experience, despite Apple products clearly not being part of its customer base.

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

jem — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 13:30:22 +0000

True. I think I'll skip Pie and go straight to Android Quiche.

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

SiliconSlick — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 13:13:23 +0000

Or Raspberry Pi... just to add more confusion. "Pie"??? really? They couldn't think of a less confusing name?

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

excors — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 09:27:18 +0000

The "AI-powered adaptive battery system" is partly described at https://developer.android.com/about/versions/pie/power :

> Based on the app usage patterns, each app is placed in one of five priority buckets. The system limits the device resources available to each app based on which bucket the app is in.
> [...]
> The system dynamically assigns each app to a priority bucket, and reassigns the apps as needed. The system may rely on a preloaded app that uses machine learning to determine how likely each app is to be used, and assigns apps to the appropriate buckets. If the system app is not present on a device, the system defaults to sorting apps based on how recently they were used.

I guess that preloaded app is part of the proprietary Google services, so non-Googlified AOSP devices can either use the default recently-used behaviour or implement their own equivalent app. (I'm not certain but I don't see why else they'd design it as an optional app.)

https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-meet-android/ gives a tiny bit more detail on the algorithm:

> we’ve partnered with the Android team to develop a feature called Adaptive Battery that uses a deep convolutional neural net to predict which apps you’ll use in the next few hours and which you probably won’t use until later.

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

oldtomas — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 07:09:53 +0000

> No need to continually send data to Google homebase

Whose "need"? Your's or Google's? And which one does count, in the end?

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

rahvin — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:51:08 +0000

All the pixel devices contain AI silicon. It's primary use so far has been to create better pictures with less expensive camera hardware. It does this by taking multiple pictures at multiple exposures and then uses their AI chip to combine these into a single picture with high fidelity than the camera could provide.

The pixel 2 takes some of the best low light pictures I've ever seen, bar none and I'm including SLR's in that list. They've got some seriously cool software running with the "AI" chip that creates pictures that the camera hardware shouldn't be capable of providing. As an example my profession requires that I sometime stick my camera into a culvert, pipe or manhole, etc to take a picture because it's impossible to see anything in the dark tunnel while in bright sunlight. Most camera are incapable of resolving the brightness difference between the inside of the pipe and the brightness at the entrance and exit and will either overexpose the bright areas or underexpose the dark areas. The pixel balances the brightness across the image and provides an image where you have perfect exposure throughout the image. It does this by taking images at multiple exposures and using its AI software to blend an image with near perfect exposure throughout, it's frankly amazing.

The AI silicon also recognizes multiple pictures taken the same area and submits the pictures to the cloud to be combined, all done without any user intervention. I believe they have intentions to expand the use of the chips including using it for on phone speech recognition and other features. IIRC the Pixel 2 includes this functionality. Google has indicated they intend to expand the use of these AI chips into every area they can where it make sense to use it.

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

donio — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 23:22:02 +0000

Just "Pie" is boring. Could have been Pecan Pie.

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

flussence — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 22:41:41 +0000

> If I wanted to be an old fart I might note that this isn't a DRM misfeature: this is an oh-look-this-thing-is-trying-to-be-smart-and-is-just-unpredictable misfeature. :P

You're right, but I wouldn't be surprised if this, even if not implemented as bluntly as oom-killer-as-a-web-service, still ends up tied to the Play Services blob so they can push new heuristics after the first wave of complaints.

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

JoeBuck — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 22:10:24 +0000

I doubt it. They probably ran machine learning on lots of data and came up with a function that decides how to adjust things to conserve power. No need to continually send data to Google homebase.

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

nix — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 22:04:58 +0000

I don't see any interpretation under which "AI-powered" might mean "has always-online DRM". AI-powered tends to mean "learns from what you usually do and tries to do much the same in future": if this is anything like the corresponding Huawei feature it'll notice when you explicitly kill things, particularly when the battery is running low, and start to do the same automatically in time. No need for any more DRM than the DRM the OS is already massively laden down with. If I wanted to be an old fart I might note that this isn't a DRM misfeature: this is an oh-look-this-thing-is-trying-to-be-smart-and-is-just-unpredictable misfeature. :P

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

atai — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 21:54:22 +0000

Android P allowing "to run Android on their iPhone X."

probably is an impression from a misread of the article

Google finalizes Android P as Android 9 “Pie,” launching today (ars technica)

flussence — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 20:52:45 +0000

Sounds great, for all the people who've been waiting to run Android on their iPhone X.

By “AI-powered”, do they mean Android's power management now has always-online DRM? Google isn't exactly known for respecting users' self-agency when that buzzword's involved.