Phones are our most personal devices nosotros convey amongst us everywhere, but until straightaway it's been difficult for apps to accommodate their sense to a user's continually changing surroundings in addition to activity. We've heard from developer afterward developer that they're spending valuable engineering fourth dimension to combine diverse signals similar location in addition to sensor information precisely to decide when the user has started or ended an activity similar walking or driving. Even worse, when apps are independently in addition to continuously checking for changes inward user activity, battery life suffers. That's why today, we're excited to brand the Activity Recognition Transition API available to all Android developers - a uncomplicated API that does all the processing for y'all in addition to precisely tells y'all what y'all genuinely aid about: when a user's activity has changed.
Since Nov of concluding year, the Transition API has been working behind the scenes to powerfulness the Driving Do-Not-Disturb characteristic launched on the Pixel 2. While it mightiness appear uncomplicated to plow on Do-Not-Disturb when car displace is detected past times the phone's sensors, many tricky challenges arise inward practice. How tin y'all tell if stillness way the user parked their car in addition to ended a create or only stopped at a traffic calorie-free in addition to volition popular off along on? Should y'all trust a spike inward a non-driving activity or is it a momentary classification error? With the Transition API, all Android developers tin straightaway leverage the same sets of grooming information in addition to algorithmic filtering used past times Google to confidently notice these changes inward user activity.
Intuit partnered amongst us to exam the Transition API in addition to institute it an ideal solution for their QuickBooks Self-Employed app:
"QuickBooks Self-Employed helps self-employed workers maximize their deductions at taxation fourth dimension past times importing transactions in addition to automatically tracking car mileage. Before the Transition API, nosotros created our ain solution to rails mileage that combined GPS, telephone sensors, in addition to other metadata, but due to the broad variability inward Android devices, our algorithm wasn't 100% accurate in addition to some users reported missing or incomplete trips. We were able to create a proof-of-concept using the Transition API inward a affair of days in addition to it has straightaway replaced our existing solution, offering a to a greater extent than reliable solution that likewise reduced our battery consumption. The Transition API frees us upward to focus our efforts on beingness the best possible taxation solution," state Pranay Airan in addition to Mithun Mahadevan from Intuit.
Automatic mileage tracking inward QuickBooks Self-Employed
Life360 similarly implemented the Transition API inward their app amongst pregnant improvements inward activity detection latency in addition to battery consumption:
"With over 10 1000000 active families, Life360 is the world's largest mobile app for families. Our mission is to popular off the must-have Family Membership that gives families peace of hear anytime in addition to anywhere. Today nosotros produce that through location sharing in addition to 24/7 security features similar monitoring driving behaviour of identify unit of measurement members, then criterion activities accurately in addition to amongst minimal battery drain is critical. To decide when a user has started or finished a drive, our app previously relied on a combination of geofences, the Fused Location Provider API in addition to the Activity Recognition API, but at that topographic point were many challenges amongst that approach including how to chop-chop notice the showtime of the create without excessively draining battery in addition to interpreting the granular in addition to rapidly changing reading from the raw Activity Recognition API. But inward testing the Transition API, nosotros are seeing higher accuracy in addition to reduced battery drain over our previous solution, to a greater extent than than coming together our needs," says Dylan Keil from Life360.
Live location sharing inward Life360
In the coming months, nosotros volition popular off along adding novel activities to the Transition API to back upward fifty-fifty to a greater extent than kinds of context-aware features on Android similar differentiating betwixt route in addition to rail vehicles. If you're prepare to purpose the Transition API inward your app, banking concern tally out our API guide.
