Top ways your phone will improve
ANDROID 10 is now available, but you’ll need a Google Pixel smartphone to install the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system. At least for now.
The update is promised for other Android phones over the next several weeks. At its I/O developer conference in May, Google announced that Android is now operating on more than 2.5 billion active devices.
Aside from new features and tools, Android 10, which until recently was known by its code name Android Q, represents a departure for Google. In calling it Android 10, Google is no longer naming the operating system after desserts as it did with the most recent iteration Pie and prior versions such as Marshmallow, Lollipop and Oreo.
Expanding Family Link
During the past few years, Google introduced tools to help you tame your kid’s smartphone addiction – and, perhaps, your own.
You could manage usage on some devices through what is called Family Link. And with last year’s version of Android (Pie), Google focused on a slate of “Digital Wellbeing” tools, for all of us who can’t seem to stop glancing at the screens.
Google says every Android 10 device (and, for that matter, Pie device) will now have Family Link.
Focus mode
We are all too easily distracted by apps and notifications on our phones. With the new Focus Mode feature that is also part of “Digital Wellbeing tools, you can choose the apps you find distracting, at least some of the time (like emails, news), and pause them with a single tap.
If you’re somehow lured by such apps anyway, Android will serve up a notice to remind you that you were hoping to focus elsewhere.
Of course, you can override that notice by heading to the phone’s settings and put such apps back in your good graces, at least until you’re again distracted by them.
Privacy updates
According to Google, Android 10 has nearly 50 new built-in privacy and security features. A few worth noting: You’ll now be able to share location data with apps while you’re using them but also receive a reminder when an app is accessing your location when you’re not actively engaging with it.
If you’re not cool with that app knowing
where you are all the time, you can stop sharing your whereabouts until you use the app again.
Moreover, Google Play can now dispatch important security and privacy fixes in the same way, Google says, that apps themselves update. You won’t need to wait for a full update to the operating system to receive such fixes.
And Google has added a Privacy section under Settings, with controls for your Web and app activity and ad settings.