Apps

Android users gain nearly a dozen new features with latest update

Comment

Image Credits: Google

Android users are poised to receive nearly a dozen new features in the latest release of the mobile operating system, including updates designed for smartphones, tablets, Wear OS smartwatches and even Google TV devices. Alongside the launch, Google is celebrating a new RCS milestone of over 1 billion monthly active users of the SMS replacement technology — which Apple, facing regulatory pressure, has begrudgingly now agreed to support.

That figure is up from 800 million monthly active users in May 2023, Google also noted.

Among the highlights from the new version of Android are several improvements to messaging, including a beta feature called “Voice Moods” that adds a colorful background and emoji theme to your voice messages so recipients get a better sense of your emotions, whether that’s surprise, laughing, feeling loved and more.

Image Credits: Google

Google Messages will also gain “Reaction Effects,” another beta feature that will create a full-screen animated emoji — somewhat similar to the message effects feature on Apple’s iMessage, but designed to react to an individual message instead of a simple thumbs up, for example.

Image Credits: Google

Plus, Google’s Emoji Kitchen — the feature that lets users remix emojis into new combinations — will include new sticker combinations that can be shared as stickers via the Gboard keyboard app.

Across other Android platforms, smartwatch users will now be able to control their smart home devices and light groups from their watch’s small screen. This includes smart appliances like robot vacuums and mops. Users can also set the mood by adjusting their light groups for different themes — like focus time, reading, dinner and more. In addition, users will be able to set their Google Home status to “Home” or “Away” from their smartwatch, shutting lights off, turning cameras on and locking doors and more when leaving, and the reverse upon their return.

Image Credits: Google

While not yet available at launch, another smart home feature coming soon will allow Wear OS users to start their Assistant Routines from their watch using voice commands. That way, they could say something like “commuting to work” that launches navigation, checks the weather and reads their day’s agenda from their calendar, for example.

Image Credits: Google

The watch will also gain a new “Assistant At a Glance” shortcut that will show you important information like weather and travel alerts, event reminders, and more, similar to the Siri watch face on the Apple Watch.

The update additionally brings accessibility and security improvements, including an AI-powered TalkBack feature that will use AI to create a description of images that don’t have accurate text descriptions and read it aloud for blind and low-vision users. Over the next few weeks, the Live Captions calling feature, which adds captions to phone calls, will support more language and users will be able to reply during a call by texting a response.

On the security side, users will be able to set a custom PIN on their FIDO2 security keys for websites or apps that request user verification, allowing passwordless logins.

Meanwhile, Android-powered Google TV will gain more than 10 new free channels to round out the lineup, which now includes over 100 free channels featuring movies, game shows, sports and more.

Google says the features will slightly vary based on the platform and individual requirements. For example, the Wear OS updates are for Wear OS 3+, while the Live Captions update is available for Android 10+, and the Talkback update is for Android 11+.

In a separate announcement, Google also shared more Messages-specific updates, including Photomoji which turns your photos’ subject into stickers via on-device AI, another feature that’s similar to one available on iOS, Screen Effects (another feature found in iMessage), custom bubbles (changing the bubble color and background for conversations), animated emoji, user profiles and more.

More TechCrunch

For over six decades, the nonprofit has been active in the financial services sector.

Accion’s new $152.5M fund will back financial institutions serving small businesses globally

Meta’s newest social network, Threads is starting its own fact-checking program after piggybacking on Instagram and Facebook’s network for a few months. Instagram head Adam Mosseri noted that the company…

Threads finally starts its own fact-checking program

Looking Glass makes trippy-looking mixed-reality screens that make things look 3D without the need of special glasses. Today, it launches a pair of new displays, including a 16-inch mode that…

Looking Glass launches new 3D displays

Replacing Sutskever is Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s director of research.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and longtime chief scientist, departs

Intuitive Machines made history when it became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon, so it makes sense to adapt that tech for Mars.

Intuitive Machines wants to help NASA return samples from Mars

As Google revamps itself for the AI era, offering AI overviews within its search results, the company is introducing a new way to filter for just text-based links. With the…

Google adds ‘Web’ search filter for showing old-school text links as AI rolls out

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket will take a crew to suborbital space for the first time in nearly two years later this month, the company announced on Tuesday.  The NS-25…

Blue Origin to resume crewed New Shepard launches on May 19

This will enable developers to use the on-device model to power their own AI features.

Google is building its Gemini Nano AI model into Chrome on the desktop

It ran 110 minutes, but Google managed to reference AI a whopping 121 times during Google I/O 2024 (by its own count). CEO Sundar Pichai referenced the figure to wrap…

Google mentioned ‘AI’ 120+ times during its I/O keynote

Firebase Genkit is an open source framework that enables developers to quickly build AI into new and existing applications.

Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps

In the coming months, Google says it will open up the Gemini Nano model to more developers.

Patreon and Grammarly are already experimenting with Gemini Nano, says Google

As part of the update, Reddit also launched a dedicated AMA tab within the web post composer.

Reddit introduces new tools for ‘Ask Me Anything,’ its Q&A feature

Here are quick hits of the biggest news from the keynote as they are announced.

Google I/O 2024: Here’s everything Google just announced

LearnLM is already powering features across Google products, including in YouTube, Google’s Gemini apps, Google Search and Google Classroom.

LearnLM is Google’s new family of AI models for education

The official launch comes almost a year after YouTube began experimenting with AI-generated quizzes on its mobile app. 

Google is bringing AI-generated quizzes to academic videos on YouTube

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: Watch all of the AI, Android reveals

Google Play has a new discovery feature for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other enhancements to developer-facing tools.

Google Play preps a new full-screen app discovery feature and adds more developer tools

Soon, Android users will be able to drag and drop AI-generated images directly into their Gmail, Google Messages and other apps.

Gemini on Android becomes more capable and works with Gmail, Messages, YouTube and more

Veo can capture different visual and cinematic styles, including shots of landscapes and timelapses, and make edits and adjustments to already-generated footage.

Google Veo, a serious swing at AI-generated video, debuts at Google I/O 2024

In addition to the body of the emails themselves, the feature will also be able to analyze attachments, like PDFs.

Gemini comes to Gmail to summarize, draft emails, and more

The summaries are created based on Gemini’s analysis of insights from Google Maps’ community of more than 300 million contributors.

Google is bringing Gemini capabilities to Google Maps Platform

Google says that over 100,000 developers already tried the service.

Project IDX, Google’s next-gen IDE, is now in open beta

The system effectively listens for “conversation patterns commonly associated with scams” in-real time. 

Google will use Gemini to detect scams during calls

The standard Gemma models were only available in 2 billion and 7 billion parameter versions, making this quite a step up.

Google announces Gemma 2, a 27B-parameter version of its open model, launching in June

This is a great example of a company using generative AI to open its software to more users.

Google TalkBack will use Gemini to describe images for blind people

Google’s Circle to Search feature will now be able to solve more complex problems across psychics and math word problems. 

Circle to Search is now a better homework helper

People can now search using a video they upload combined with a text query to get an AI overview of the answers they need.

Google experiments with using video to search, thanks to Gemini AI

A search results page based on generative AI as its ranking mechanism will have wide-reaching consequences for online publishers.

Google will soon start using GenAI to organize some search results pages

Google has built a custom Gemini model for search to combine real-time information, Google’s ranking, long context and multimodal features.

Google is adding more AI to its search results