> We partnered with DeepMind on a feature called Adaptive Battery that uses machine learning to prioritize system resources for the apps the user cares about most.
You know what mind I would like to control what apps get more resources?
Me
You know what mind I would like to control what apps get more resources?
Me
But that kind of low-level stuff isn't something most people care about or want to do. They just want the damn thing to work.
That was like Mac users who said that cooperative multitasking was better because it let games run more smoothly, while technically correct. It was like being happy that your dog pooped on your carpet because now you have free fertilizer.....
Think of it as a resource manager controlled by you, but with the only interface that the general market will be able to use for something with a fair amount of technical nuance - ML.
Its the same thing as using those battery manager task killer apps. For a pixel, those apps will result in worse battery life, because recent android versions manage resource consumption better than users will.
I noticed recently that WhatsApp, Reddit Sync, and a few other apps were draining battery life like crazy. But none of that drainage was being shown in the battery stats.
Google is purposefully hiding how some apps use battery, and it started years ago when they allowed apps to hide under "Android OS" and "System" categories. In more recent versions they "fixed" this by simply not showing the Android OS and System categories in the battery stats anymore.
Google doesn't want to show how some apps use your battery because they drain the battery with similar methods that Google itself uses to drain your battery (by polling your location all the time, etc).
https://developer.android.com/studio/profile/battery-histori...
Every new feature comes at a UX cost, and in this case, the cost of the UX outweighs the benefits of you micromanaging your memory footprint.
That's not exactly an easy problem.
Currently used apps
scheduled background work
currently active foreground services like the navigation app you are curently using, the image that is uploading in the background or the music that is playing .. stuff without a visible UI (except for a notification so you know what is going on). All important but not the main thing displayed right now.
You also need to throttle the CPU when the phone runs too hot.
But not run it at minimum speed either because it would make everything laggy.
Also, if you pick up your phone out of your pocket, it automatically wakes up and increase CPU frequency because it is likely you are going to use it.
Etc ..
This is very complex problem, it is ok to let a machine balance this for us.
I use snapchat, but I actually hate the app. It's a bloated memory and battery hog in my opinion. Is Adaptive Battery going to think I love Snapchat and prioritize more system resources for it just because I use it? Cause I want the exact opposite to happen. I want Snapchat using 0% of my system resources except for the few times a day when I check my snaps.
Also I hate losing control of my system in favor of some nebulous decision making criteria I can't control (ML)
It sounds like this feature is exactly made for cases like the one you describe: if you don't use Snapchat throughout the day, it won't stay in memory like it currently does (which seems to be ~ a LRU cache), instead staying in memory only when you're predicted to use the app over and over. (so not Snapchat in your case)
I've seen no evidence of this. Plenty of features that do not work or work poorly are launched every day.
Especially machine learning stuff, which is hard to test for normal (and abnormal) users and debug the recommendations. See e.g. the Nest. I know people who got one and hated it since it never get the hang of their schedules and would make bizarre decisions. Others love them.
In my experience, "personalized recommendations" are universally trash
Check YouTube's "trending" tab and come back here to say if you'd rather have that instead of the personalized recommendations.
It is trash, but that's what you get when you use data based recommendations.
So in practice, the resource usage of Snapchat for you would probably not change at all, but that one game app you downloaded 2 months ago and never played will stop querying the master server every day to serve you more ads.