What I found in my Pie!

madbilly

Hi everyone,

So last night, after satisfying myself that finally HMD were serving a tasty pie and not one a half-baked insect pie I took the plunge and updated from build 4.88 2018-12 to 5.150. To get this I had to put my Vodafone UK SIM in my phone, because using my usual French SIM I was not offered anything since January and even my dead Virgin Mobile France SIM would only get me 5.140 February build.

The most exciting thing I found are cats! For some reason the Android Neko easter egg from Android 7 is available as one of the quick setting menu shortcuts! So far I have cat #64

Here's a few other things which I find noteworthy:

• Woah! What have they done to the task switcher?! I still haven't got used to it! Surprisingly, when I first booted into the new OS the task switcher included apps which I haven't used for months! This shows what Android retains in it's cache. However, today I haven't got anything except the three most recent apps, so it appears that the battery saver optimisation has kicked in and killed even some recently used apps, which I find quite unhelpful.
• It now takes two down swipes and a click to access settings, whereas before it only took one down swipe and a click, so this is a retrograde step.
  
• What new UI?! As far as I can tell the only noteworthy thing is that the swipe-down quick settings view is less useful as it contains less icons. I don't have the new "App Actions" in the app drawer (at least it's not obvious to me) and I can't make swipe up show me recent apps at all. I can't find this Slices thing yet either, but maybe that was never available.
  
• Continuing the "what new UI?" I note that my launcher is now called QuickStep but I don't have the Google search bar; maybe as my home screen was already full in Oreo they gracefully decided not to enforce on me something I would not need and didn't have space for? They had also nicely retained my preference to not have Google Assistant visible on left-to-right swipe.
  
• As an aside, I finally took the plunge and disabled the Google app after I noted the above point. I hope this doesn't impact anything.
• As I was disabling things I also disabled Chrome and was then surprised to see that I could actually uninstall Indic, Pinyin and Zhuqin input support, which I personally have no use for. I think that previously these things could not be uninstalled, only disabled.
• I had a mapping app open (Maps from F-Droid aka Maps.me) and it became visible and usable on the lock screen! Woah! The phone was charging at the time. Is this normal behavious for mapping/navigation apps?
• Digital Wellbeing! I mean, yey, digital wellbeing! ? !? Seriously though, I find the info interesting, but I'm not using timers. I quite like the monochrome setting and wind-down; together with my already set night-light for the display tint and do-not-disturb settings this all comes together nicely. Whether it stops me using my phone more remains to be seen though!
• Private DNS I would like to use but so far it tells me "couldn't connect" and I lose internet access, but that may be because I'm at work and it will be different at home.

So, what have I missed? What have I misunderstood?

Oh and I managed to re-find System UI tuner plus lots of other goodies using Activity Launcher from F-Droid too

Cheers

madbilly

I just realised that I might have found @jumble in my pie!

As for the other things I noted, like all the lauded UI improvements, is that normal or am I missing something?

Mick1965

Regarding the two swipes down to get to the settings icon.

Just use a two finger swipe down, it'll open the whole thing in one go.👍

madbilly

Thanks @Mick1965 !

ABuyer

Mick1965 said:

Regarding the two swipes down to get to the settings icon.

Just use a two finger swipe down, it'll open the whole thing in one go.👍

This option has been on Android since lollipop 5.0.

terminusaquo

The Nokia 8 is missing a lot of Pie features simply because it's not an Android One device, just take Adaptive Battery, the Nokia 6.1 has the ACTUAL Adaptive Battery complete with the settings yet the Nokia 8 has it in name only as it's just Battery Manager renamed.

MrBelter

My Nokia 8.1 has adaptive battery and with my hand on my heart i can honestly say it makes búgger all difference.

ignas

While it's still called battery manager, how do we know it's any different from "true" adaptive battery under the hood? It doesn't seem to be missing any extra settings.

potemkin_redux

ignas said:

While it's still called battery manager, how do we know it's any different from "true" adaptive battery under the hood? It doesn't seem to be missing any extra settings.

I hadn't noticed any improvement in battery life. It's same as it was with Oreo. If I remember correctly, true Adaptive Battery works in a way that it automatically restricts some apps and displays them on a restricted apps list and then if you wish so, you can allow some of them to continue running in the background. For me it works only if I go to settings of each app and manually restrict them from running in the background. Then it shows on a list of restricted apps. It doesn't seem like Nokia 8 version of Adaptive Battery is adapting to anything.

MrBelter

My experience with the Nokia 8.1 is i had to restrict all the apps i thought were using battery manually, it was happy to plod along letting everything run.

terminusaquo

This is on my Nokia 6.1, notice the description differs in that the Nokia 8 will only detect when apps drain the battery but the 6.1 will limit the battery for infrequently used apps.

madbilly

Hi @terminusaquo, the descriptions on the adaptive battery page which you show for the 6.1 are the same as Ignas shows for the 8 above, and the same as on my 8 which behaves just the same as @potemkin_redux explains.

(what happened to @potemkin, @potemkin_redux?!)

Cheers

terminusaquo

madbilly said:

Hi @terminusaquo, the descriptions on the adaptive battery page which you show for the 6.1 are the same as Ignas shows for the 8 above, and the same as on my 8 which behaves just the same as @potemkin_redux explains.

(what happened to @potemkin, @potemkin_redux?!)

Cheers

Read what it says under the togglable option, Battery Manager only Detects when apps are draining the battery whereas Adaptive Battery actually limits battery usage for apps you don't use often.

martin.fd

On my Nokia 8, the "Intelligent Battery", as the Adaptive Battery is called in German, has actually already put apps to sleep on its own (which I then had to wake up manually for permanent use ...)

madbilly said:

(what happened to @potemkin, @potemkin_redux?!)

he explained here: https://community.phones.nokia.com/discussion/comment/114366#Comment_114366