Android Pie, also known as Android 9, comes with a plethora of enhancements and new features that have the potential to drastically improve user experience on smartphones. Here are twelve features that stand out and give users reason to be excited about the update.

1. Gesture Navigation: Moving away from traditional navigation buttons, Android Pie introduces a new, intuitive gesture-based navigation system, making multitasking and app navigation smoother and quicker.

2. Adaptive Battery: Using AI, Adaptive Battery learns your usage patterns and prioritizes battery power for the apps and services you use the most, helping to extend your device’s battery life substantially.

3. App Actions: This feature predicts what you’re about to do next based on your context and displays that action right on your phone, saving you time by letting you quickly start your next task.

4. Slices: Slices bring relevant parts of apps to the surface in different places on the phone. For example, if you search for Lyft on your phone, you’ll see a “slice” that allows you to book a ride directly from the search results.

5. Digital Wellbeing Dashboard: A suite of tools including App Timers, Do Not Disturb and Wind Down to help users track and manage their device use and establish healthy digital habits.

6. Improved Notifications: Notifications are now more informative and functional – with the ability to view images in notifications and smart reply options that let you respond within the notification itself without opening the app.

7. Brightness Boost: A new adaptive brightness setting learns how you like to set the brightness slider given your surroundings and automatically does it for you over time.

8. Rotation Suggestion Button: A small pop-up button appears when the device detects that it’s been rotated – giving you control over whether your screen rotates or not.

9. Background Restrictions: Now you can easily see which apps have been consuming battery in the background and restrict them with just a tap.

10. New Volume Controls: The redesigned volume slider moves closer to the physical volume buttons for ease of access, and there’s also an option for quickly toggling between audio outputs.

11. Privacy Enhancements: Enhanced privacy settings allow more control over things like camera, microphone, location data sharing and more – providing better security overall.

12. Support for Notches: With more phones coming out with notch designs on their displays, Android Pie offers better support for these devices by managing status bar space more intelligently.

These features in Android Pie aim not just at improving visual aesthetic but significantly refining user experience by making smartphones more personal, efficient, and easy to use – showing why it is an exciting update for Android users worldwide.