Tag Archives: Google

How Apple & Google Are Enhancing Battery Life and What We as App Developers Can Do to Help

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In 1799, Italian physicist Alessandro Volta created the first electrical battery, disproving the theory that electricity could only be created by human beings. Fast forward 250 years, brands like Duracell and Energizer popularized alkaline batteries—which are effective, inexpensive and soon become the key to powering household devices. In 1991, Sony released the first commercial rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Although lithium-ion batteries have come a long way since the 90s, to this day they power most smartphones and many other modern devices.

While batteries have come a long way, so have the capabilities of the devices which need them. For consumers, battery life is one of the most important features when purchasing hardware. Applications which drain a device’s battery are less likely to retain their users. Software developers are wise to understand the latest trends in battery optimization in order to build more efficient and user-friendly applications.

HARDWARE

Lithium-ion batteries remain the most prevalent battery technology, but a new technology lies on the horizon. Graphene batteries are similar to traditional batteries, however, the composition of one or both electrodes differ. Graphene batteries increase electrode density and lead to faster cycle times as well as the ability to improve a battery’s lifespan. Samsung is allegedly developing a smartphone powered by a graphene battery that could fully charge its device within 30 minutes. Although the technology is thinner, lighter, and more efficient, production of pure graphene batteries can be incredibly expensive, which may inhibit its proliferation in the short-term.

Hardware companies are also coming up with less technologically innovative solutions to improve battery life. Many companies are simply attempting to cram larger batteries into devices. A more elegant solution is the inclusion of multiple batteries. The OnePlus 9 has a dual cell battery. Employing multiple smaller batteries means both batteries charge faster than a single cell battery.

SOFTWARE

Apple and Google are eager to please their end-users by employing techniques to help optimize battery life. In addition, they take care to keep app developers updated with the latest techniques via their respective developer sites.

Android 11 includes a feature that allows users to freeze apps when they are cached to prevent their execution. Android 10 introduced a “SystemHealthManager” that resets battery usage statistics whenever the device is unplugged, after a device is fully charged or goes from being mostly empty to mostly charged—what the OS considers a “Major charging event”.

Apple has a better track record of consuming less battery than Android. iOS 13 and later introduced Optimized Battery Charging, enabling iPhones to learn from your daily charging routine to improve battery lifespan. The new feature prevents iPhones from charging up to 100% to reduce the amount of time the battery remains fully charged. On-site machine learning then ensures that your battery is fully charged by the time the user wakes up based on their daily routines.

Apple also offers a comprehensive graph for users to understand how much battery is being used by which apps, off screen and on screen, under the Battery tab of each devices Settings.

WHAT APPLICATION DEVELOPERS CAN DO

App developers see a 73% churn rate within the first 90 days of downloading an app, leaving very little room for errors or negative factors like battery drainage. There are a number of techniques application developers can employ in their design to reduce and optimize battery-intensive processes.

It’s vital to review each respective app store’s battery saving standards. Both Android and Apple offer a variety of simple yet vital tips for reducing battery drain—such as limiting the frequency that an app asks for a device’s location and inter-app broadcasting.

One of the most important tips is to reduce the frequency of network refreshes. Identify redundant operations and cut them out. For instance, can downloaded data be cached rather than using the radio repeatedly to re-download it? Are there tasks that can be deferred by the app until the device is charging? Backing up data to the cloud can consume a lot of battery on a task that is not always time sensitive.

Wake locks keep the phone’s screen on when using an app. There was a time where wake locks were frequently employed—but now it is frowned upon. Use wake locks only when absolutely necessary—if at all.

CONCLUSION

Software developers need to be attentive to battery drain throughout the process of building their application. This begins at conception, through programming, all the way into a robust testing process to identify potential battery drainage pitfalls. Attention to the details of battery optimization will lead to better, more user-friendly applications.

The Top In-App Purchase Tactics for 2022

Android Development, Gaming & Monetization Strategies, iOS Development, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

According to Sensor Tower, consumers spent $111 billion on in-app purchases, subscriptions, and premium apps in 2020 on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. How can your app take advantage to maximize revenue? Every app is different and begets a unique answer to the all important question: What’s the best way to monetize?

App Figures recently published a study which showed only 5.9% of Apple App Store apps are paid, compared to a paltry 3.7% on Google Play. Thus, the freemium model reigns supreme—according to app sales statistics, 48.2% of all mobile app revenue derives from in-app purchases.

When creating an in-app purchase ecosystem, many psychological and practical considerations must be evaluated. Below, please find the best practices for setting in-app purchase prices in 2022.

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

Behavioral economics is a method of economic analysis that applies psychological insights into human behavior to explain economic decision-making. Creating an in-app purchase ecosystem begins with understanding and introducing the psychological factors which incentivize users to make purchases. For example, the $0.99 pricing model banks on users perceiving items that cost $1.99 to be closer to a $1 price point than $2. Reducing whole dollar prices by one cent is a psychological tactic proven to be effective for both in-app purchases and beyond.

Another psychological pricing tactic is to remove the dollar sign or local currency symbol from the IAP storefront and employ a purchasable in-app currency required to purchase IAPs. By removing the association with real money, users see the value of each option on a lower stakes scale. Furthermore, in-app currencies can play a major role in your retention strategy.

ANCHORING

Anchoring is a cognitive bias where users privilege an initial piece of information when making purchasing decisions. Generally, this applies to prices—app developers create a first price point as an anchoring reference, then slash it to provide users with value. For example, an in-app purchase might be advertised at $4.99, then slashed to $1.99 (60% off) for a daily deal. When users see the value in relation to the initial price point, they become more incentivized to buy.

Anchoring also relates to the presentation of pricing. We have all seen bundles and subscriptions present their value in relation to higher pricing tiers. For example, an annual subscription that’s $20/year, but advertised as a $36 value in relation to a monthly subscription price of $2.99/month. In order for your users to understand the value of a purchase, you have to hammer the point home through UI design.

OPTIMIZE YOUR UI

UI is very important when it comes to presenting your in-app purchases. A well-designed monetization strategy can be made moot by insufficient UI design. Users should always be 1-2 taps away from the IAP storefront where they can make purchases. The prices and discounts of each pricing option should be clearly delineated on the storefront.

Furthermore, make sure you are putting your best foot forward with how you present your prices. Anchoring increases the appeal of in-app purchases, but in order for the user to understand the deal, you have to highlight the value in your UI design by advertising it front and center in your IAP UI.

OFFER A VARIETY OF CHOICES

There are a number of IAPs trending across apps. In order to target the widest variety of potential buyers, we recommend offering a variety of options. Here are a few commonly employed options:

  • BUNDLES: Offer your IAPs either à la carte or as a bundle for a discount. Users are always more inclined to make a bigger purchase when they understand they are receiving an increased value.
  • AD FREE: Offer an ad-free experience to your users. This is one of the more common tactics and die-hard users will often be willing to pay to get rid of the ad experience.
  • SPECIAL OFFERS: Limited-time offers with major discounts are far more likely to attract user attention. Special offers create a feeling of scarcity as well as instill the feeling of urgency. Consider employing holiday specials and sending personalized push notifications to promote them.
  • MYSTERY BOX: Many apps offer mystery boxes—bundles often offered for cheap that contain a random assortment of IAPs. Users may elect to take a chance and purchase in hopes of receiving a major reward.

While offering users a variety of choices for IAPs is key, having too many choices can cause analysis paralysis and be stultifying to users. Analysis paralysis is when users are hesitant to make an in-app purchase because they’ve been given too many options. Restrict your IAPs to the most appealing options to make decisions easy for your users.

TESTING IS KEY

As with any component of app development, testing is the key to understanding your audience and refining your techniques. We recommend testing your app with a random user group and taking their feedback as well as having them fill out a questionnaire. A/B Testing, or split-run testing, consists of testing two different user groups with two different app experiences. A/B testing enables app developers to see how users react to different experiences and to evaluate what tactics are most user-effective.

There are many tactics to help incentivize users to make that big step and invest capital in an app. Savvy developers innovate every day—stay tuned on the latest trends to keep your in-app purchase strategy on the cutting edge.

Learn How Google Bests ARKit with Android’s ARCore

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Previously, we covered the strengths of ARKit 4 in our blog Learn How Apple Tightened Their Grip on the AR Market with the Release of ARKit 4. This week, we will explore all that Android’s ARCore has to offer.

All signs point toward continued growth in the Augmented Reality space. As the latest generations of devices are equipped with enhanced hardware and camera features, applications employing AR have seen increasing adoption. While ARCore represents a breakthrough for the Android platform, it is not Google’s first endeavor into building an AR platform.

HISTORY OF GOOGLE AR

In summer 2014, Google launched their first AR platform Project Tango.

Project Tango received consistent updates, but never achieved mass adoption. Tango’s functionality was limited to three devices which could run it, including the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro which ultimately suffered from numerous issues. While it was ahead of its time, it didn’t receive the level of hype ARKit did. In March 2018, Google announced that it will no longer support Project Tango and that the tech titan will be continuing AR Development with ARCore.

ARCORE

ARCore uses three main technologies to integrate virtual content with the world through the camera:

  • Motion tracking
  • Environmental understanding
  • Light estimation

It tracks the position of the device as it moves and gradually builds its own understanding of the real world. As of now, ARCore is available for development on the following devices:

ARCORE VS. ARKIT

ARCore and ARKit have quite a bit in common. They are both compatible with Unity. They both feature a similar level of capability for sensing changes in lighting and accessing motion sensors. When it comes to mapping, ARCore is ahead of ARKit. ARCore has access to a larger dataset which boosts both the speed and quality of mapping achieved through the collection of 3D environmental information. ARKit cannot store as much local condition data and information. ARCore can also support cross-platform development—meaning you can build ARCore applications for iOS devices, while ARKit is exclusively compatible with iOS devices.

The main cons of ARCore in relation to ARKit mainly have to do with their adoption. In 2019, ARKit was on 650 million devices while there were only 400 million ARCore-enabled devices. ARKit yields 4,000+ results on GitHub while ARCore only contains 1,400+. Ultimately, iOS devices are superior to software-driven Android devices—particularly given the TrueDepth Camera—meaning that AR applications will run better on iOS devices regardless of what platform they are on.

OVERALL

It is safe to say that ARCore is the more robust platform for AR development; however, ARKit is the most popular and most widely usable AR platform. We recommend spending time determining the exact level of usability you need, as well as the demographics of your target audience.

For supplementary reading, check out this great rundown of the best ARCore apps of 2021 from Tom’s Guide.

How to Leverage AR to Boost Sales and Enhance the Retail Experience

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The global market for VR and AR in retail will reach $1.6 billion by 2025 according to research conducted by Goldman Sachs. Even after years of growing popularity, effectively employed Augmented Reality experiences feel to the end-user about as explicitly futuristic as any experience created by popular technology.

We have covered the many applications for AR as an indoor positioning mechanism on the Mystic MediaTM blog, but when it comes to retail, applications for AR are providing real revenue boosts and increased conversion rates.

Augmented Reality (AR) History

Ivan Sutherland 1

While working as an associate professor at Harvard University, computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, aka the “Father of Computer Graphics”, created an AR head-mounted display system which constituted the first AR technology in 1968. In the proceeding decades, AR visual displays gained traction in universities, companies, and national agencies as a way to superimpose vital information on physical environments, showing great promise for applications for aviation, military, and industrial purposes.

Fast forward to 2016, the sensational launch of Pokemon GO changed the game for AR. Within one month, Pokemon GO reached 45 million users, showing there is mainstream demand for original and compelling AR experiences.

Cross-Promotions

Several big brands took advantage of Pokemon GO’s success through cross-promotions. McDonald’s paid for Niantic to turn 3,000 Japan locations into gyms and PokeStops, a partnership that has recently ended. Starbucks took advantage of Pokemon GO’s success as well by enabling certain locations to function as PokeStops and gyms, and offering a special Pokemon GO Frappucino.

One of the ways retailers can enter into the AR game without investing heavily in technology is to cross-promote with an existing application.

In 2018, Walmart launched a partnership with Jurassic World’s AR game: Jurassic World Alive. The game is similar to Pokemon GO, using a newly accessible Google Maps API to let players search for virtual dinosaurs and items on a map, as well as battle other players. Players can enter select Walmart locations to access exclusive items.

Digital-Physical Hybrid Experiences

The visual augmentation produced by AR transforms physical spaces by leveraging the power of computer-generated graphics, an aesthetic punch-up proven to increase foot traffic. While some retailers are capitalizing on these hybrid experiences through cross-promotions, others are creating their own hybrid experiential marketing events.

Foot Locker developed an AR app that used geolocation to create a scavenger hunt in Los Angeles, leading customers to the location where they could purchase a pair of LeBron 16 King Court Purple shoes. Within two hours of launching the app, the shoes sold out.

AR also has proven potential to help stores create hybrid experiences through indoor navigation. Users can access an augmented view of the store through their phones, which makes in-store navigation easy. Users scan visual markers, recognized by Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCore, and other AR SDKs, to establish their position, and AR indoor navigation applications can offer specific directions to their desired product.

Help Consumers Make Informed Choices

Ikea Place Screenshots

AR is commonly employed to enrich consumers’ understanding of potential purchases and prompt them to buy. For example, the “IKEA Place” app allows shoppers to see IKEA products in a superimposed graphics environment. IKEA boasts the app gives shoppers 98% accuracy in buying decisions.

Converse employs a similar application, the “Converse Sampler App”, which enables users to view what a shoe will look like on their feet through their device’s camera. The application increases customer confidence, helping them make the decision to purchase.

Treasury Wines Estates enhances the consumer experience with “Living Wine Labels”: AR labels that bring the history of the vineyard to life and provide users with supplementary information, including the history of the vineyard the wine came from and tasting notes.

Conclusion

AR enables striking visuals that captivate customers. As a burgeoning tool, AR enables companies to get creative and build innovative experiences that capture their customers’ imagination. Retailers who leverage AR will seize an advantage both in the short term and in the long term as the technology continues to grow and evolve.

GPT-3 Takes AI to the Next Level

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“I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot… I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column. My brain is boiling with ideas!” – GPT-3

The excerpt above is from a recently published article in The Guardian article written entirely by artificial intelligence, powered by GPT-3: a powerful new language generator. Although OpenAI has yet to make it publicly available, GPT-3 has been making waves in the AI world.

WHAT IS GPT-3?

openai-cover

Created by OpenAI, a research firm co-founded by Elon Musk, GPT-3 stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3—it is the biggest artificial neural network in history. GPT-3 is a language prediction model that uses an algorithmic structure to take one piece of language as input and transform it into what it thinks will be the most useful linguistic output for the user.

For example, for The Guardian article, GPT-3 generated the text given an introduction and simple prompt: “Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.” Given that input, it created eight separate responses, each with unique and interesting arguments. These responses were compiled by a human editor into a single, cohesive, compelling 1000 word article.

WHAT MAKES GPT-3 SPECIAL?

When GPT-3 receives text input, it scrolls the internet for potential answers. GPT-3 is an unsupervised learning system. The training data it used did not include any information on what is right or wrong. It determines the probability that its output will be what the user needs, based on the training text themselves.

When it gets the correct output, a “weight” is assigned to the algorithm process that provided the correct answers. These weights allow GPT-3 to learn what methods are most likely to come up with the correct response in the future. Although language prediction models have been around for years, GPT-3 can hold 175 billion weights in its memory, ten times more than its rival, designed by Nvidia. OpenAI invested $4.6 million into the computing time necessary to create and hone the algorithmic structure which feeds its decisions.

WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

GPT3 is the product of rapid innovation in the field of language models. Advances in the unsupervised learning field we previously covered contributed heavily to the evolution of language models. Additionally, AI scientist Yoshua Bengio and his team at Montreal’s Mila Institute for AI made a major advancement in 2015 when they discovered “attention”. The team realized that language models compress English-language sentences, and then decompress them using a vector of a fixed length. This rigid approach created a bottleneck, so their team devised a way for the neural net to flexibly compress words into vectors of different sizes and termed it “attention”.

Attention was a breakthrough that years later enabled Google scientists to create a language model program called the “Transformer,” which was the basis of GPT-1, the first iteration of GPT.

WHAT CAN IT DO?

OpenAI has yet to make GPT-3 publicly available, so use cases are limited to certain developers with access through an API. In the demo below, GPT-3 created an app similar to Instagram using a plug-in for the software tool Figma.

Latitude, a game design company, uses GPT-3 to improve its text-based adventure game: AI Dungeon. The game includes a complex decision tree to script different paths through the game. Latitude uses GPT-3 to dynamically change the state of gameplay based on the user’s typed actions.

LIMITATIONS

The hype behind GPT-3 has come with some backlash. In fact, even OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman tried to fan the flames on Twitter: “The GPT-3 hype is way too much. It’s impressive (thanks for the nice compliments!), but it still has serious weaknesses and sometimes makes very silly mistakes. AI is going to change the world, but GPT-3 is just a very early glimpse. We have a lot still to figure out.”

Some developers have pointed out that since it is pulling and synthesizing text it finds on the internet, it can come up with confirmation biases, as referenced in the tweet below:

https://twitter.com/an_open_mind/status/1284487376312709120?s=20

WHAT’S NEXT?

While OpenAI has not made GPT-3 public, it plans to turn the tool into a commercial product later in the year with a paid subscription to the AI via the cloud. As language models continue to evolve, the entry-level for businesses looking to leverage AI will become lower. We are sure to learn more about how GPT-3 can fuel innovation when OpenAI becomes more widely available later this year!

Five Mobile Ad Platforms You Need to Know in 2021

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For most mobile app developers, the majority of revenue comes from advertising. We have written in the past about the prevalence of the Freemium model and what tactics maximize both the retention and profits of mobile games. Another major decision every app developer faces is what mobile advertising platform to choose.

Mobile advertising represents 72% of all U.S. digital ad spending. Publishers have a variety of ad platforms to choose from, each with individual pros and cons. Here are the top mobile advertising platforms to consider for 2021:

Google AdMob

google-admob

Acquired by Google in 2010, Google AdMob is the most popular mobile advertising network. AdMob integrates high-performing ad formats, native ads, banner ads, video, and interstitial ads into mobile apps.

AdMob shows over 40 billion mobile ads per month and is the biggest player in the mobile ad space. Some users criticize the platform for featuring revenues on the lower side of the chart; however, the platform also offers robust analytics to help publishers glean insights into ad performance.

Facebook Ads

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Facebook’s Audience Network leverages the social media platform’s massive userbase toward offering publishers an ad network designed for user engagement and growth. Like AdMob, Facebook Ads offers a variety of ad types, including native, interstitial, banner, in-stream video, and rewarded video ads.

With over 1 billion users, Facebook has utilized their massive resources to build out their ad network. Facebook Ads provide state-of-the-art tools, support, and valuable insights to grow ad revenue. Facebook Ads sets itself apart by offering a highly focused level of targeting. Facebook collects a vast amount of data from its users, thus Facebook Ads enables app publishers to target based on a variety of factors (interests, behaviors, demographics and more) with a level of granularity deeper than any other platform.

InMobi

InMobi Logo

InMobi offers a different way of targeting users, which they have coined “Appographic targeting”. “Appographic targeting” analyzes the user’s existing and previous applications rather than traditional demographics. If a user is known to book flights via an app, then related ads, such as that of hotels and tourism will be shown.

The InMobi Mediation platform enables publishers to maximize their ad earnings with unified auction solutions and header bidding for mobile apps.

TapJoy

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TapJoy has received increased consideration from mobile game developers since the platform integrates with in-app purchases. Studies show that mobile players will engage with advertisements if offered a reward. TapJoy has capitalized on this by introducing incentivized downloading, which provides mobile gamers with virtual currency through completing real world actions. For example, a user can earn virtual currency in the game they are playing by downloading a related game in the app store.

TapJoy provides premium content to over 20,000 games and works with major companies like Amazon, Adidas, Epic Games, and Gillette.

Unity Ads

Unity-ads-1

Unity, the popular mobile app development platform, launched Unity Ads in 2014. Since then, it’s become one of the premier mobile ad networks for mobile games. Unity Ads supports iOS and Android mobile platforms and offers a variety of ad formats. One of the major features is the ability to advertise In-App Purchases displayed in videos (both rewarded and unrewarded) to players.

On a targeting level, Unity Ads allows publishers to focus on players that are most likely to be interested in playing specific games based on their downloads and gameplay habits. Many of the leading mobile game companies use Unity to build their app and Unity Ads as their ad platform.

CONCLUSION

These are not the only mobile ad networks, but for app publishers looking to stay current, they are the premier platforms to research. Other platforms like media.net, Chartboost, Snapchat Ads, Twitter Ads, and AppLovin also merit consideration.

When it comes to advertising, every app and app publisher has different needs. Since advertising plays a massive role in generating revenue, mobile app developers set themselves up for success when they do the research, and can find what ad platforms are best suited to their product.

App Developers Take a Bigger Slice of the Pie with Android P

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App developers looking to witness what Machine Learning can do to improve UI should take note of Android 9.0 Pie. First announced in March 2018, Android P was made public in August 2018. Android 9.0 marks a major overhaul of the Android OS focusing on UI and integrating Artificial Intelligence to optimize user experience.

AI HELPS ANDROID PIE HELP YOU

Android’s latest OS takes a big step forward integrating AI into the UI. The Android website advertises that “Android 9 Pie harnesses the power of AI for a truly intuitive experience”.

One of the major implementations of AI in Pie is called App Actions. Android 9.0 monitors your routines, processes data, and offers predicted actions directly in the phone’s app launcher when appropriate. For example, it can recommend a song to you on Spotify when you’re on your morning commute. Android has focused on quality over quantity with regard to App Actions and they are startlingly accurate—when it has enough data collected on how you use your phone, often it predicts exactly what you do next.

In addition to App Actions, Android Pie also offers Adaptive Battery and Adaptive Brightness. Android teamed up with the AI company DeepMind to create Adaptive Battery, an AI-based program that learns how you use your phone and optimizes usage so that inactive apps and services don’t drain the battery. Adaptive Brightness learns your preferred brightness settings and automatically adjusts them to your liking.

Those concerned with privacy should note that Android has stated that all machine learning is happening on the device rather than in the cloud.

ANDROID ADOPTS GESTURES OVER BUTTONS

Perhaps the biggest UI overhaul is the transition from buttons to gestures. Android P is following the  iPhone X’s lead in using gestures rather than buttons. This means UI is very home-screen button centric. The overhaul may be jarring to some. Luckily, app users can have it both ways as gesture navigation is adjustable in the phone’s settings.

Check out the video breakdown of the differences between Apple iPhone X and Android P gestures below.

THIS PIE’S GONNA HAVE SLICES

Android has announced App Slices in Android Pie, but has yet to unveil them at this time. When you search for an app on Android,  the app icon comes up. With App Slices, Android will not only pull up the icon, but will pull up actual information within apps and allow you to interact with the app directly within the search results. For example, if you search for Uber, it may bring up time & price estimates to go to commonly frequented locations and allow you to set a pick-up without having to open the app directly.

Android Slices present a great opportunity for app developers to create shortcuts to functions in their app. They also constitute the beginnings of Google’s approach to “remote content.” Learn more about Slices below:

APP LIMITS FOR ENCOURAGING HEALTHY USE

Addicted to your phone? Android P not only tracks the amount of time you spend on your phone, it allows users to set time limits for how long an app can be used for a day. App Time Limits prevent you from opening apps when you’ve gone over your limit with no option to ignore—the only way to access them again for the day is to turn the time limit off from the Settings page.

HUNGRY FOR PIE?

As with all Android OS’s, Android Pie will have a staggered release across devices. As of November 2018, it is available on Pixel phones as well as The Essential Phone.

Meanwhile, Android Pie is anticipated to be rolled out on many other phones by December 21st. For a comprehensive, frequently updated breakdown, check out Android Central’s list of the expected roll out dates for each phone manufacturer.

The Real Power of Artificial Intelligence

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Technological innovations expand the possibilities of our world, but they can also shake-up society in a disorienting manner. Periods of major technological advancement are often marked by alienation. While our generation has seen the boon of the Internet, the path to a new world may be paved with Artificial Intelligence.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Artificial intelligence is defined as the development of computer systems to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, including speech recognition, visual perception, and decision-making. As recently as a decade ago, artificial intelligence evoked the image of robots, but AI is software not hardware. For app developers, the modern-day realization of artificial intelligence takes on a more amorphous form. AI is on all of your favorite platforms, matching the names and faces of your friends. It’s planning the playlist when you hit shuffle on Apple Music. It’s curating the best Twitter content from you based on data-driven logic that is often too complex even for the humans who programmed the AI to decipher.

MACHINE LEARNING

Currently, Machine Learning is the primary means of achieving artificial intelligence. Machine Learning is the ability for a machine to continuously improve its performance without humans having to explain exactly how to accomplish all of the tasks it has been given. Web and Software programmers create algorithms capable of recognizing patterns in data imperceptible to the human eye and alter their behavior based on them.

For example, Google’s autonomous cars view the road through a camera that streams the footage to a database that centralizes the information of all cars. In other words, when one car learns something—like an image or a flaw in the system—then all the cars learn it.

For the past 50 years, computer programming has focused on codifying existing knowledge and procedures and embedding them in machines. Now, computers can learn from examples to generate knowledge. Thus, Artificial Intelligence has already permanently disrupted the standard flow of knowledge from human to computer and vice versa.

PERCEPTION AND COGNITION

Machine learning has enabled the two biggest advances in artificial intelligence:  perception and cognition. Perception is the ability to sense, while cognition is the ability to reason. In a machine’s case, perception refers to the ability to detect objects without being explicitly told and cognition refers to the ability to identify patterns to form new knowledge.

Perception allows machines to understand aspects of the world in which they are situated and lays the groundwork for their ability to interact with the world. Advancements in voice recognition have been some of the most useful. In 2007, despite its incredibly limited functionality, Siri was an anomaly that immediately generated comparisons to HAL, the Artificial Intelligence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 10 years later, the fact that iOS 11 enables Siri to translate French, German, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish is a passing story in our media lifecycle.

Image recognition has also advanced dramatically. Facebook and iOS both can recognize your friends’ faces and help you tag them appropriately. Vision systems (like the ones used in autonomous cars) formerly made a mistake when identifying a pedestrian once in every 30 frames. Today, the same systems err less than once in 30 million frames.

EXPANSION

AI has already made become a staple of mainstream technology products. Across every industry, decision-making executives are looking to capitalize on what AI can do for their business. No doubt whoever answers those questions first will have a major edge on their competitors.

Next week, we will explore the impact of AI on the Digital Marketing industry in the next installment of our blog series on AI.

Android Oreo Serves Up the Sweets

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Like the candy, Google’s newest delectable dessert-themed operating system Android 8.0 Oreo offers the best of both worlds: crunchy cookie goodness of versatile functionality and the creamy frosting of beautiful UI and presentation.

PROJECT TREBLE 

Project Treble is one of the major aspects of Android Oreo that makes it a full 1.0 update. Project Treble is designed to reduce device fragmentation by making it easier for hardware manufacturers to issue updates on Android devices. The architecture redesign modularizes the Android OS away from the drivers and other hardware-specific code. By making it easier for manufacturers to update Android devices, Project Treble makes accessing the latest Android OS from your devices  easier than ever.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE BLUETOOTH AUDIO

Android Oreo is loaded up with BLUETOOTH 5 and LDAC, making Oreo capable of supporting audio quality that surpasses what the vast majority of high-end audio equipment can reproduce.

LDAC is a codec that supports the transfer of 24 bit, 96kHz audio via Bluetooth. The closest competitor is Qualcomm’s aptX HD which supports 24 bit, 48kHz technology. LDAC was created by Sony, who donated the codec to Android for Oreo as a part of the core AOSP code for other OEMS to implement.

Whereas previous iterations of Bluetooth offered a range of 50m-100m outdoors and 10m-20m indoors, Bluetooth 5 can reach up to 200m outdoors and 40m indoors. Additionally, Bluetooth 5 BLE doubles Bluetooth 4.x BLE’s data transfer rate with up to 2Mbps. The kicker is: Bluetooth 5 actually utilizes up to 2.5 times less power while increasing range and speed.

BATTERY LIFE

The Android Oreo update includes multiple initiatives designed to improve battery life. Background execution limits have been enacted to limit requests to scheduled windows of activity, resulting in longer battery life and less strain on the device by inactive apps.

Android Oreo places two major limitations on what apps can do while users aren’t directly interacting with them:

  1. Background Service Limitations limit the use of background services by idle apps. This does not apply to foreground apps, which are defined as apps with visible activity, apps with a foreground service, or apps that are connected to another foreground app.​
  2. Broadcast Limitations prevent apps from using their manifest to register for implicit broadcasts. Apps can still use their manifest to register for broadcasts at runtime and for explicit broadcasts targeted specifically at their app.

For the most part, app developers can work around these limitations using JobScheduler jobs. Android has also made several improvements to JobScheduler.

Background execution limits will have a major impact on the functionality of existing and future apps, check out a full breakdown of the new functionality directly from Android.

Additionally, Android Oreo comes with Vitals. Vitals is an initiative by Google that improves system performance and stability by offering developers various tools to monitor app usage on a device. Vitals enables developers to  optimize their apps for improved battery life and performance.

UI

Google’s strategy with OS updates has become more and more minimal in recent years. The last major visual OS overhaul was enacted by Google in Android 5.0 Lollipop. Android Oreo does not change the name of the game, but offers a variety of UI improvements.

DOWNLOADABLE FONTS: Android 8.0 Oreo offers support for apps to request fonts from a “provider” application, reducing the amount of disk space spent by apps on storing font libraries individually.

NOTIFICATION CHANNELS: Notifications have always been one of the strong suits of Android Operating Systems. With Android Oreo, app notifications must be sorted by the developer into channels based on type, so that the user can then customize what types of notifications they would like to receive and how they receive them.

For example, users can modify characteristics of notification channels that apply to all notifications in that channel, including:

  • Importance
  • Sound
  • Lights
  • Vibration
  • Show on lock screen
  • Override do not disturb

PICTURE IN PICTURE MODE: Oreo ports Android’s famous “Picture-In-Picture Mode” for phones and tablets. Picture-In-Picture Mode allows users to view multiple apps at the same time. It is most handy for watching video or having a video call while using another app.

TAKEAWAY

Overall, Android 8.0 Oreo delivers the goods. It’s sleek, supports the best audio quality available, allows more UI customizability, saves battery life, and it’s a major step toward conquering device fragmentation which has plagued Android since its inception.

Android O: What Google’s Latest OS Offers App Developers

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On March 21st, Google unveiled the developer preview for the latest version of the largest OS in the world: Android O. For consumers, it means improved UI, design, battery life, & more. For app developers, it has far deeper implications. With release anticipated in Q3 2017, here is our rundown of the top takeaways about Android O for Android developers:

BATTERY LIFE

The main focus of Android O appears to be to continue Android Nougat’s initiative to reduce battery life. The OS will limit and manage what launched apps can do in the background when multiple apps are open. For example, if a user has a geolocation app open in the background while using another app, location updates will happen less frequently for the background app.

In technical terms, background execution & location limits have been reigned in, allowing the OS to better manage background activity. Background apps are defined by Google as apps showing no visible activity, no foreground service & not connected to a foreground app through its services. Location changes affect the following APIs:

  • Fused Location Provider (FLP): The local system service computes a new location for background apps only a few times each hour, according to the interval defined in the Android O behavior change. Foreground apps will not experience location sampling rates in relation to Android 7.1.1 (API level 25).
  • Geofencing: Background apps can receive geofencing transition events more frequently than from FLP.
  • GNSS Measurements: Callbacks registered to receive outputs from GnssMeasurement and GnssNavigationMessage will stop executing for background apps.
  • Location Manager: Location updates will be provided to background apps only a few times per hour according to the interval defined in the Android O behavior change.

NOTIFICATION CHANNELS

Android OS’s have always thrived in the notification department. Android O allows developers to group notifications into channels. Developers must select a channel for each distinct type of notification they send with the goal of making things easier and more customizable for the user. For example, a user can turn off the “Sports” notification channel from the New York Times app if they are already getting sports notifications from the ESPN app.

Developers can also allow user behavior to dictate notification channels. For example, the developer of a messaging app can create separate notification channels for each of a user’s messaging threads.

WI-FI AWARE

Wi-Fi Aware, or Neighbor Awareness Network (NAN), allows devices to discover and connect directly with each other without any other connectivity between them, like Wi-Fi Access Point or Cellular. Two phones can connect with each other with NAN and share data at high speeds without any additional apps or configuration, opening up tons of possibilities for developers.

Learn more about Wi-Fi Aware:

HI-FI BLUETOOTH AUDIO

Android O supports Hi-Fi Bluetooth audio. While the quality of the audio still depends on the speaker or headphone through which one listens, this is a major improvement for music lovers.

ADAPTIVE ICONS

Android O will introduce adaptive launcher icons. Adaptive icons support visual effects and can display a variety of shapes across different device models. Adaptive icons are a major tool for developers to guide the user’s eye and enhance UX. Check out Android’s developer site to learn more.

RELEASE SCHEDULE

via Android Developers
via Android Developers

The O Developer preview will run from March 21st to the final Android O public release anticipated in Q3 2017. Android will provide incremental updates in mid-May, June, & July. Until Q3 2017, the onus is on Android developers to prepare their future and existing apps for the latest operating system.