Back in March Google released the first developer preview of Android P also now as Android 9. The developer preview came with some new features such as Indoor Positioning with Wi-Fi RTT, Display cutout or notch support, Enhanced messaging experience, Multi-camera support, HDR VP9 Video, HEIF image compression and more.

The company has new officially released a Beta (DP2) version of which brings even more features. In this post, we will be taking a look at some of the new features introduce by the Big G.

1) New System Navigation Gestures: Android P saw Google introducing a a new system navigation feature that allows users easier access to Home, Overview, and the Assistant from a single button on every screen. According to Google, the new feature makes multitasking and makes discovering related apps much easier.
In the Overview, users have a much larger view of what they were doing when they left each app, making it much easier to see and resume the activity. The Overview also provides access to search, predicted apps, and App Actions, and takes users to All Apps with another swipe.

2) Adaptive Battery: Google partnered with DeepMind to optimizes how apps use battery on Android P. Google says, Adaptive Battery uses machine learning to prioritize access to system resources for the apps the user cares about most.
It puts running apps into groups with different restrictions using four new "App Standby buckets" ranging from "active" to "rare". Apps will change buckets over time, and apps not in the "active" bucket will have restrictions in: jobs, alarms, network and high-priority Firebase Cloud Messages.

3) App Actions: What this does, is to help you get to your next task more quickly by predicting what you want to do next. They put your app's core capabilities in front of users as suggestions to handle their tasks, from key touch-points across the system like the Launcher and Smart Text Selection, Google Play, Google Search app, and the Assistant.
Google says it uses the same catalog of common intents as conversational Actions for the Google Assistant, which surface on voice-activated speakers, Smart displays, cars, TVs, headphones, and more.

4) Slices: This offers a new way for your apps to provide remote content to users. The feature makes it possible for you to surface rich, templated UI in places like Google Search and Assistant. interactive with support for actions, toggles, sliders, scrolling content, and more.
If you search for “Lyft” in Google Search, you can see an interactive Slice that gives you the price and time for a trip to work, and it’s interactive so you can quickly order the ride.
This is part for Android Jetpack, new set of libraries and tools for building apps. Through Jetpack, Slices implementation can target users all the way back to Kitkat — across 95% of active Android devices.

5) Background Restrictions: This features makes it possible for users to identify and manage apps that are using battery in the background. This allows you to lists the apps that are draining your batter and also restrict their background activities with a single tap.
Google also made it known that when an app is restricted, its background jobs, alarms, services, and network access are affected. To stay off of the list, pay attention to your Android Vitals dashboard in the Play Console, which can help you understand performance and battery issues.

Source: https://www.techchairman.com/2018/05/5-main-features-of-android-p-you-should.html