Google brings Pixel improvements to battery, sleep quality, and personal safety features

Google puts forth a host of new features for their Pixel phones, some of which that work on Google Pixel devices as early as the Google Pixel 2.

As announced in their blog post, Google is bringing further improvements to Adaptive Battery on Pixel 2 and newer devices. Previously, Adaptive Battery learns about the frequently used apps on your Pixel device to reduce power on the ones that are rarely used.

Now, Adaptive Battery is capable of predicting when the battery runs out, and it further cuts down background activity to keep the phone lasting longer.

The Clock app now comes with a new Bedtime functionality designed for people who take their sleep schedules seriously. It offers a snapshot of time spent awake on the phone past assigned bedtime hours, on which app, and for how long.

Sunrise Alarm allows the user to set a favourite song as their alarm tone, and be woken up by a gradually brightening display. Finally, there's a feature that lets you play calm sounds to aid sleep.

The Bedtime feature in the Clock app is available to Pixel 2 and newer Pixel devices.

On the Google Pixel 4 series, The Recorder app can now be voice-controlled via Google Assistant, offering start, stop and search features, e.g. "Hey Google, search voice recordings for..." etc. A transcript of your recording can be saved directly to Google Docs as well. These features are available in English only.

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Finally, the Personal Safety app that was initially on the Pixel 4 is now available to all Google Pixel devices.

Additional features include a safety check, where the app checks in on you at an appointed later time, e.g. enabling it before going for a hiking trail, or out for the evening.

Should the user not respond to the follow-up, the app will alert your emergency contacts and share your real-time location using Google Maps. Additionally, the user can enable Crisis Alerts, which informs the Google Pixel about natural disasters and public emergencies happening in their vicinity or region.

Finally, Car Crash Detection, which was on the Pixel 4, will be made available on the Pixel 3 as well.

The rolling out of these updates starts from today, and it affects all Pixel devices across the globe.

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.