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Google Play now shows app screenshots tailored to specific devices
Watches, smartphones, tablets, oh my!
Google Play as an app faces the difficult task of having to adapt to many different smartphone brands and hardware, which can lead to glitches and bugs popping up out of nowhere, even on Google Pixel phones. This extends to struggles to accurately show what its apps look like on different form factors, such as smartwatches and tablets, rather than just smartphones. When app developers upload screenshots of their software running on non-phone form factors, Google Play forces the user to scroll to the end of a long line of photos to see what it looks like on their device. That will no longer be the case with the addition of device filters on app pages.
The Play Store is working to stop recommending lower-quality apps
Listings and recommendations should become more useful
While the Android Dev Summit takes a week off before diving into the subject of form factors, the Google Play team is announcing some new capabilities for app developers that will subtly impact how users experience the Play Store. Some of the changes will give more visibility and promotion to some apps while blocking some others from appearing in recommendations, and you may even see some app listings change descriptions just for you.
It looks like Google is building an iOS-to-Android migration app
After the Data Restore Tool surfaced on the Play Store, teardowns point to Google's plans
You might not be familiar with the name Data Restore Tool, but odds are most of our readers have actually seen the app in action before — if not when setting up a new phone for the first time, then occasionally as an aside in our coverage when we cover the topic. It's preinstalled on many (I'd hazard to say most) recent Android phones and handles part of the process that migrates data between your old phone and new one. And almost immediately after teasing a whole new simplified backups system, now Google is bringing the app to the Play Store, and teardowns provide a partial explanation: Google's making a "Switch to Android" iOS app it will work with.