Google I/O day one is just about a wrap, and with it came an absolute tsunami of news. Android is getting its biggest design overhaul in half a decade. Wear OS is being completely pivoted — and merging with Samsung Tizen?! Android Automotive is headed to more cars, and as usual, Google announced a smorgasbord of app updates and changes to apps you use every day. We've got all the big news here, and there's a lot of it, so let's buckle down and get through this stuff!
Android 12 redesign (Material You)
Material You is the latest version of Google's official design language, and it's coming to Android 12 this fall to Pixel first (for more on that, read our story here). Along with it will come major changes to the entire Android aesthetic, including greater personalization along with a very fresh coat of paint for the entire operating system. Oh, and the new beta of the OS is live now for Pixels, and here are all the OEMs who plan to support Android 12 betas as time goes on.
If you download the Android 12 beta today, you can get a taste of this new interface, and we the details here in our post with a first look.
We've got a deeper dive in our post on Material You right here, and let me tell you: we are excited. This is easily the biggest Android redesign in years, and it just looks stunningly good — Google even brought Matias Duarte on stage to introduce it! Here's a mega-gallery of some of the new Android looks.
Android 12 also promises big improvements to performance to go along with this fresh new look, with fewer stutters and lockups. It all sounds very promising.
Oh, and side note: there are now over three billion Android devices out there!
Developers will have better tools to build Material You apps
As part of Android 12, Google has launched new versions of Android Studio and Jetpack Compose. Both are designed to facilitate the creation of Material You style apps, and make the process simpler by providing UI components as part of new libraries. There'll also be tools to enhance app performance.
Android 12 UI changes so far in the first Beta
As I mentioned earlier in the post, some of Android 12's new interface elements are already live in Beta 1 for Pixel smartphones. This includes an overhauled PIN entry form on the lockscreen, as well as a sparkly new ripple animation for taps.
Assistant widgets
Google is bringing rich widget-style content to Assistant queries on your smartphone as part of Android 12, allowing the results interface to display much more varied and useful content you can interact with directly instead of launching you into an app or webpage. The implementation looks nifty, but it's all down to — you guessed it — developers to support a lot of this stuff.
Android TV changes are coming
The Android TV 12 Beta is going live now (but sadly, you probably can't get it), and it includes previously announced features like Stream Transfer and Stream Expansion. Google is also overhauling the Android TV remote control, meaning the current remote control app will very likely be deprecated later this year.
Wear OS gets completely reinvented
Wear OS is undergoing the biggest change in the platform's history: Google is teaming up with Samsung and combining the Wear OS and Tizen wearable operating systems into a single, unified platform. The announcement included a massive redesign for the OS, and promises from Google of renewed investment in smartwatches, along with the implication of strong cooperation with Samsung on wearables going forward.
Smartwatches have been a bugbear for Google from day one. None of the company's iterations of Android Wear (later Wear OS) really impressed anyone, and reliance on lackluster Qualcomm silicon left the platform feeling abandoned. We hope this renewed investment will finally change the game for Android-compatible smartwatches and other wearables.
Google also announced that powerful new fitness and wellness features will come to this platform via Fitbit, which Google now owns. There's still a lot to learn about Google's new wearable platform and what the future of the hardware that will utilize it, but it's the most confident Google's sounded about smartwatches in years. We can only hope the follow-through matches today's exciting new vision. We're curious, what's your take?
And in terms of new features? YouTube Music is coming to Wear OS. Finally.
Android Auto and Automotive
Android Auto wireless is coming to more manufacturers this year, as is Android Automotive. Google is also announcing that your Android phone will become a car key when used with vehicles from select manufacturers, which is pretty cool (and something Apple announced last year).
Auto and Automotive will also become simpler for developers to handle, with apps between the two essentially becoming intercompatible thanks to some changes on the back end by Google.
Google Photos
New features for Google Photos like locked folders, photo grids, cinematic moments, and memory controls have us perked up as well.
Locked folders in Google Photos
The new memory controls are particularly notable, as they'll allow you to hide memories with certain people, pets, or even a specific image from being surfaced as a memory in the Photos app. New pattern recognition AI will make it even easier to find and create collections of objects and scenes you've photographed.
Google Maps
Google Maps announced a suite of changes, like new safe routing that will help you avoid particularly dangerous cycling routes or areas where pedestrians have poor access to sidewalks or are overly exposed to traffic. There will also be new alerts about especially crowded neighborhoods and areas, as opposed to just businesses and places of interest.
A quick demo of Google Maps' new area busyness experience
There are also some notable changes like more detailed street maps for 50 cities, some of which you should check out in our more detailed post linked in the first sentence of this paragraph.
Advanced new search AI (MUM)
A new "Multitask Unified Model" (codenamed "MUM") will allow Google to interpret text, language, and media in radically powerful new ways. Google says this will allow for far, far more complex queries in search, like "I've hiked Mt Adams and now want to hike Mt Fuji, what should I do to prepare differently?" — a question that a mountaineer might be able to answer without skipping a beat, but that a search engine would be utterly useless to solve when queried in this fashion. Another crazy example: imagine showing Google a picture of your hiking boots and asking if they'd be suitable for hiking Mt Fuji.
OK Google, this is kinda nuts
That feels like the kind of magical future Google frequently offers, though rarely delivers in practice, so color us skeptical for now. But the fact that they're even shooting for this kind of functionality is pretty amazing stuff.
Privacy controls
New privacy controls like deleting the last 15 minutes of your search history allow you to quickly and easily get rid of recent queries. Google Maps is getting reminders about your location history, with a quick toggle to turn off location tracking, along with the aforementioned Google Photos locked folder.
Quickly and easily delete your last 15 minutes of searches
Google Chrome will also prompt you to change your password on sites directly where it knows you have a compromised password.
Major changes to Android's privacy controls are also in store as part of the Android 12 update (like microphone and camera kill switches), and it's tough to summarize in our overview, but you can find all the details in our rundown right here.
LaMDA conversational AI
Google later unveiled its brand-new LaMDA conversational AI, which produces some mind-blowingly human language in dialogue (one of Google's demos was a conversation with the ex-planet Pluto). Another demo involved chatting with a paper airplane, one of the most strangely abstract things I think I've ever seen a computer do. That said, it was all exceptionally impressive, if a little odd.
Only Google would chat with a paper airplane to demo new AI tech
These new conversational models have practical uses, too, but Google promises that its Assistant AI will become radically more intelligent when it comes to understanding complex but natural inquiries like "find a beautiful mountain view" in Maps, or showing a video of a lion roaring on YouTube. It's pretty wild stuff.
Workspaces
We've seen big changes to Workspaces, with support for Google Meet integration directly into Google's suite of apps like Docs, Sheets, and Slides — which should make for significantly easier collaboration on projects.
A whole lot more changes for Docs and Sheets are also in play, so be sure to check out our full post on those right here.
Quantum computing (we're just as confused as you)
Google then lept into the world of quantum computing, but we'd be lying if we said we had a good idea of the implications of those announcements at this point — it's cutting-edge science involving technology that could power a generational leap in processing. Relatedly, Google wants us to know quantum computers need to be really, really, cold! Even this really abstract art piece doesn't exactly do much to help me understand what this is all about, but it sounds exciting (and difficult).
I can't say I understand any of this any better now
A holodeck window, because why not
Project Starline feels like a typical Google "moonshot" project: almost unbelievable, but also almost certainly so expensive and impractical as to be unlikely to ever see the light of day in its current form. But it's still really wild, and I highly suggest you watch the demo reel below.
"Android" - Google News
May 19, 2021 at 04:59AM
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Android 12's radical new design, Wear OS brought back from the dead, and more: Every big Google I/O announcement - Android Police
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