The QuickBooks Self-Employed app has successfully tested the use of Transition API
Google says that it has heard from app developers who say that they are spending too much time working with location and sensor data just to determine when an Android user has started or ended certain activities like walking or driving. And all of the checking that an app needs to do to ascertain whether the user is just starting his travels, or is at his destination, takes a toll on a phone's battery life.
To help preserve the battery on Android handsets, Google has introduced the Activity Recognition Transition API. Available to all Android developers, the API tells developers when a user has changed his activity. It has been used on the
Google Pixel 2 to run the latter's Driving Do-Not-Disturb feature; Do-Not-Disturb is automatically enabled once the phone determines that it is in motion (inside a car). But the reason for motion and lack of motion can be hard for a phone to understand; did the motion stop because the user reached his destination and parked the car, or did the driver merely stop at a red light? The Transition API uses training data and algorithms "to confidently detect these changes in user activity."
Google partnered with Intuit to test the Transition API on the QuickBooks Self-Employed app. Before the test, Intuit employed GPS, phone sensors, and other metadata to automatically track mileage on the app for tax purposes. Intuit says that using the Transition API offers a more reliable way to automatically track mileage, while reducing battery consumption on a handset.
Similar results were achieved by the Life360 app, which used the Fused Location Provider API and the Activity Recognition API to keep track of the driving behavior of family members. But determining the start of a trip would drain the battery on a user's phone, among other problems. Switching to the Transition API improved the accuracy of the app and bolstered battery life.
"QuickBooks Self-Employed helps self-employed workers maximize their deductions at tax time by importing transactions and automatically tracking car mileage. Before the Transition API, we created our own solution to track mileage that combined GPS, phone sensors, and other metadata, but due to the wide variability in Android devices, our algorithm wasn't 100% accurate and some users reported missing or incomplete trips. We were able to build a proof-of-concept using the Transition API in a matter of days and it has now replaced our existing solution, offering a more reliable solution that also reduced our battery consumption. The Transition API frees us up to focus our efforts on being the best possible tax solution."-Pranay Airan and Mithun Mahadevan, Intuit
Google says that it will continue to add new context-aware features to Transition API, including the ability for an Android handset to determine if it is in a car or riding on a train.
source:
Google
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