Android P

This year, Google is doing something different with Android.

Instead of showing you all the ways you can use its phone

operating system to do more, it’s creating features to help

you use it less.

Android P, due out later this year, will have a new dashboard

that tells you how often, when, and for how long you are using

every app on your phone. It will also allow you to set limits on

yourself. You could give yourself a half-hour of Instagram per

day, for example. Once your 30 minutes is up, the icon will go

from its usual eye-catching gradient to a dull grayscale.

The feature is one of several that Google is combining into a

theme it calls “Digital Well Being.” Presumably, it didn’t want to

borrow “Time well spent,” the buzzy catchphrase popularized by

ex-Google “design ethicist” Tristan Harris and adopted (or better:

co-opted) by Mark Zuckerberg.

Android P also includes a new core interface that uses iPhone-

like navigation gestures and smarter ways to access functions

that are usually buried away inside apps. It’s the biggest change

to how users get around on their phones that I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s also available as a public beta starting right away on 11 different

phones. That’s intriguing because Google is actually making progress

on getting manufacturers to update their phones in a timely manner.

Seriously, there’s a lot here. Last year, Android Oreo was more

about internal changes than user-facing features. This year, Android

P (and no, Google isn’t saying what the “P” stands for yet) is full of

visual changes and new features. In terms of how it actually feels to

use an Android device day-to-day, it could be the biggest update in

years.