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As you might know, Chrome for Android allows you to save websites on your home screen for easy access. The first Android O Developer Preview added support for a new 'Adaptive icons' feature, and Chrome now appears to be taking advantage of it for home screen shortcuts.
ROLI's modular BLOCKS studio has gained popularity recently, as a way to easily create music. Taps and gestures on the BLOCKS turn into musical rhythms when paired to the iOS 'NOISE' app. Now ROLI is making the NOISE app available for Android as well, but it has some limitations.
Google added a search function to the Android settings app back in Android 5.0, making it far easier for new users to find exactly what they need. Starting with Android O, the search results not only contain subtext to better explain the results, but apps are now included as well.
There are a few reasons why your phone or tablet stops getting Android updates. One reason could be that the maker of your device's processor (e.g. Qualcomm or MediaTek) never updated the drivers for newer versions of Android. This is why no phones or tablets with the Snapdragon 800/801 chip ever officially received Android 7.0 Nougat, including the Nexus 5.
Android has never really been designed for use on desktop or laptop PCs, but various ports like Android x86 and Remix OS have appeared over the years. Now that Android apps can run on Chromebooks, perhaps Google thought it was finally time to implement pointer capture support in Android.
Instant Apps were announced one year ago at Google I/O 2016, but only now are they rolling out to a large amount of users. Now any developer can make instant Apps, and Google showed off a massive list of them at a session earlier today (seen above).
As you may know, Android O changes the entire set of system emojis, turning the famous 'blob' faces into more generic circles. However, a lesser known casualty of this change was the cat emoji - which has also been radically changed. Someone has started a petition on Change.org to bring back the old cat, which is currently sitting at 153 signatures.
Mobile VR hasn't really taken off, and Google's augmented-reality Project Tango experiment is in the same boat. The first publicly-available phone with Project Tango, the Lenovo Phab2 Pro, launched last year. If you read our review, you'll know that the massive size, poor performance, and price made it a hard sell even for VR/AR enthusiasts.
Google has definitely been focusing on space-saving and performance improvements with Android O, such as faster boot times and the leaner Android Go operating system. Fonts aren't quite as exciting, unless you like to spice up your reports and presentations with obscure typefaces. Regardless, Android O has a few improvements in store for developers wanting to use custom fonts in their applications.
Manually entering your payment information every time you check out on a new site (or app) is incredibly annoying. In fact, Google says virtual shopping carts are abandoned twice as often on mobile for that very reason. To help alleviate this problem, it looks like Google is working on a PayPal-like payment API that works on desktop and mobile.
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One of the unique features of Google's Inbox mail application was smart replies. Inbox tries to predict what the message is about, and provides three quick replies. I'll admit, I don't use it much, but it's pretty nice if you're quickly exchanging messages.
Instant Apps were announced exactly one year ago at Google I/O 2016, allowing sites to load basic native applications from search results, in place of normal web sites. Instant Apps load quickly, have all the functionality of native Android apps (including the ability to request permissions), and don't require a brand new version of Android.
Android TV hasn't had much attention from Google in the past few months. The first Android O Developer Preview had no noticeable differences on the platform, and YouTube TV still doesn't have an Android TV application. I suppose good things come to those who wait, because Android TV is getting a brand new launcher with Android O.
I can't say I watch 360-degree videos much on YouTube... or at all. But I'm sure some people do, and if you are one of those people, you'll be happy to know that you can now easily view 360-degree content on your living room TV.
No matter how easy or simple storing all your photos in the cloud is, some people prefer to have hard copies of their favorite memories. There is no shortage of services and companies that offer easy creation of photo books, but now Google Photos has the functionality built-in.
Google Photos is one of my favorite Google products. It's not only great for photo backups, but also for sharing images quickly and easily. Google is adding more machine learning magic to Photos with the introduction of 'Suggested sharing,' which aims to take all the work out of sharing pictures.
One of the problems with "smart" assistants is that they really only help you when you ask them. Just yesterday, Amazon announced that Alexa will start supporting notifications, and now the Home will have a similar system. Called 'Proactive Assistance,' the feature will alert users of important information.
The Google Home already supports a large number of music streaming services - including YouTube Music, TuneIn, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and NPR One. Today at Google I/O, Google announced more services will be compatible - including free Spotify accounts.
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- The Google Assistant application is live on the Apple App Store, and clocks in at 256MB. You'll need a device running iOS 9.1 or later to try it out.
Two days ago, we shared that Google Assistant was almost definitely about to arrive on iOS. Not to be all "told you so," but, we told you so. At Google's I/O 17 event, the company revealed that Assistant is now officially available for iOS devices.
It's no secret that one of Google's strengths in recent years has been voice recognition. In my own experience, my Google Home picks up what I am trying to say almost every time, even in a low voice. Obviously the success rate varies by language and accent, but it is still pretty darn impressive.