Best App On Pixel 2 Ported To More Android Phones

This week the folks behind CarbonROM revealed they'd ported Pixel 2's best feature to other devices. This is a big deal for those that desperately wanted the Pixel 2, but haven't yet made the jump from their slightly older smartphone. Why move when you can get the features for free?

Users can get the Google Pixel 2 ambient music recognition feature – app – whatever you'd like to call it – on a variety of other phones, very soon. Users will need to root their device to make this happen, and they have to be willing to use a rather excellent AOSP-based ROM. That's Android Open Source Project, for those uninitiated, and it means it's Android without the Google – unless you want the Google, that is to say.

BEHOLD: Your fine art clone, via Google

The feature still just works with the Google Pixel 2 XL, for now, but the developer suggested this week that he's getting it to work elsewhere. Development was done by XDA user/developer frap129. According to XDA, the developer has the feature working on that one phone, and others are on the way now that "the groundwork has been laid."

The music feature works with a list of songs from Google, collected in a list of songs in the 10s of thousands. While earlier reports suggested the list was significantly shorter, Google confirmed its size at this larger size – and that it's getting larger. This list of songs the system recognizes is updated weekly with Google Play Music's most popular streamed songs.

It'll be interesting to find out how this service will work on non-Pixel devices through the ROM listed above. Either that list of songs will have to be captured and kept locally, or there'll need to be a back door opened. We're guessing it's the former. Don't get it twisted: some sort of black magic is at work here!