Android Pie in Perspective (Premium)

This week, Google shipped the final version of Android P---now called Pie----giving us our first non-beta peek at the next version of this platform. So this is a good time to take a step back and see how this release is evolving the most popular mobile computing platform on earth.

To that end, I've installed every pre-release version of Android P on my Google Pixel 2 XL, my daily-use smartphone, and I will upgrade to the final version as soon as it arrives. I've generally had pretty good luck with Google's pre-release Android builds over the years, and that's been the case this go-round too. That said, Android Pie has not solved the biggest issue I have with Android, which is the performance creep that sets in over time. This is something I've experienced with every Google phone, and the Pixel 2 XL is no different.

(Since I'm replacing my Pixel 2 XL this coming week anyway, I won't bother to reset it now. But I would have otherwise, just to start fresh with the final version of Android P.)

Performance problems or no, Android is now a mature system. And it's interesting to see how Google, like Apple and Microsoft, both of which are also managing their own mature computing platforms, is adjusting to this change.

I feel like Google and Apple both strike a good balance between release cadence---they both release major mobile OS updates once a year---and rate of change. As with the coming release of iOS 12, Android Pie contains no major, earth-shattering and potentially disruptive changes.

This is by design. And it contrasts somewhat with Microsoft, which updates Windows 10 far too often (biannually) but has just this year gotten the memo on not overloading each new release with too much pointless change. At this point in each platform's life cycle, numerous small and useful changes add up to a much more satisfying release than a handful of unnecessary big changes.

And I do find Android---generally, and Android Pie specifically---very satisfying. When I switched to Android from the iPhone last year, a move that also included switching to Project Fi full-time, I knew it didn't have to be a one-way street. If iOS 12 and the iPhone X2 (or whatever they call it) were exciting enough, I'd happily skip to the other side of the street in a heartbeat. Or so I thought.

But this past year has been interesting. In the course of using Android 8.x Oreo first and then the pre-release versions of Android P, I've found that I actually prefer Android over iOS. This is something that happened slowly, and over time. And it was frankly a bit unexpected. I use an iPad every day to read---the newspaper in the morning, Kindle e-books and Pocket otherwise, for the most part. And my iPads have been on the iOS 12 beta all along too. But I just don't feel that tug with iOS. It's fine. But I don't feel drawn to it.

It's hard to quantify why this is so. The open nature of Android is well-understood, but the reality of it is even more compelling than...