Smartphone addiction/overuse is a psychological dependence on the gadget, similar to internet addiction disorder (IAD). In extreme cases, the affected users exhibit problematic behaviours related to substance use disorders.
Being one of the largest tech company in the world as well as the developer of Android, Google is trying to handle the situation by the introduction of Digital Wellbeing. Their motto is quite simple:
As technology becomes more and more integral to everything we do, it can sometimes distract us from the things that matter most to us. We believe technology should improve life, not distract from it. We’re committed to giving everyone the tools they need to develop their own sense of digital wellbeing. So that life, not the technology in it, stays front and center.
The Digital Wellbeing service is tightly integrated with Android Pie and uses a lot of under-the-hood APIs to monitor usage pattern of other apps. Users can put time limit on addictive apps as well use the ‘Wind Down’ feature to bring a black-and-white imagery.
Digital Wellbeing support was initially limited to the Pixel lineup, but Google quickly expanded the coverage to multiple Android One and third party phones. Developers took the advantage of the public APIs and came up with apps having similar functionalities.
Major Android OEMs, such as Samsung or Huawei created their own variation of the digital wellbeing dashboard. Following the footsteps of their competitors, OnePlus also announced to integrate Digital Wellbeing in OxygenOS for the OnePlus 7 series.
The Chinese OEM rolled out day-one OTA update for the OnePlus 7 Pro in multiple regions. However, only one variant got Digital Wellbeing related fixes.
The concerned portion of the changelog is as follows:
Digital Wellbeing
– Added Wind Down in Digital Wellbeing (Settings-Digital Wellbeing)
– Added Grayscale feature in Wind Down (Settings-Digital Wellbeing-Wind Down)
However, this particular section was not present in the changelog for Indian and European OnePlus 7 Pro units. Moreover, users having those models are unable to find any kind of reference to Digital Wellbeing in their OS.
Indian OnePlus 7 pro with model no. GM1911 doesn’t have the digital well being feature even after the latest update of 9.5.3.GM21AA. Any idea what might be the reason or is this issue specific to my unit
(Source)
Interestingly, the T-Mobile branded OnePlus 7 Pro also lacks this handy functionality. It is a known fact that the carrier branded variant comes with crippled software compared to the unlocked model, but the unavailability of an advertised feature is something new.
OnePlus Global Community Manager David Y. answered one of these queries. According to him, some last minutes bugs prevented the team to roll out the feature to the masses.
On the other hand, Szymon Kopeć (OnePlus Product) indicated the arrival of tons of India specific new features via future updates of OxygenOS. In the demo, they presented something called ‘Work-Life Balance’.
This app lets you set the work and leisure timings. It can also be possible to blacklist apps to send notifications during that time.
According to the media interactions, users can get rich analytics about app usage with the help of a bar chart. Sounds similar, isn’t it? That’s exactly Google’s Digital Wellbeing app does!
You can get info about how you spend time on your Pixel phone, like how often you unlock it and how long you use each app. You can use that info to improve your digital wellbeing. For example, you can set app timers and schedule display changes.
At this moment, we are not sure whether OnePlus will bring this Work-Life Balance app as a substitute of the original Digital Wellbeing app in every region or not. PiunikaWeb is keeping a tab on upcoming OTA updates to track these changes.
FYI, turning off the Digital Wellbeing service can substantially improve the performance of your phone in some cases.
How often do you use your phone in a day? Comment below.
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Kingshuk De
896 Posts
I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.
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