Taking a look back at seven days of news across the Android world, this
week’s Android Circuit highlights a number of stories including the
reveal of Android M, Google Now on Tap, Project Brillo and ‘The Internet
of Things’, Google Photos spins out of Plus, Android loses market share
to Apple, Samsung’s new camera control, The Sony Xperia Z3+, and how
the Galaxy S6 beats the iPhone 6.
Google Reveals Android M, The Sixth Major Version Of The OS
As Google’s annual I/O developer conference opened, the big focus was
on the next version of Android. Android M (which confectionary the M
will be named after is still to be announced) brings in a sea of changes
to Mountain View’s mobile operating system, and Forbes’ Gordon Kelly
has taken a look at the differences between M and its predecessor,
Android Lollipop (L):
Well, just like Apple’s upcoming iOS 9. Android M will also focus
primarily on optimisation with speed and battery life central to the
experience. That said there is still a lot of key differences between
Android M and Android Lollipop, the first of which is a potential game
changer.
Tapping Into The Contextual Market
The biggest change is Google ‘Now On Tap’. This moniker covers a sea
of updates and improvements to the contextual ‘Google Now’ application
which is currently available through a long-press on your Android
smartphone’s home screen. It brings even more granularity to a search,
with Google Now able to interpret data from any app that you are
currently using. TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois explains what it will
tap into:
Say you are playing a song in Spotify. Tapping and holding the home
button will bring up more info about the song you are looking at. But
you can also do a voice query and ask: “Who is the lead singer?” Google
Now already knows what song is playing and using data from the Knowledge
Graph project — it can (hopefully) answer your questions.
Similarly, this service can work its magic from Hangouts, for
example. Say you are discussing “the new George Clooney movie” with a
friend. Bringing up Now On Tap will give you more information about
Tomorrowland, because Google knows that’s what you are talking about.
Some of the information you can expect to see are movie times, reviews
and maybe more information about the actors in the film. Because of
Google’s App Indexing project, it can also recommend related
applications (maybe IMDB or Flixster) and deep links into them (if you
have them installed). If your friend had asked you to remember to buy
tickets for the movie, Google Now would also have popped up a box to set
a reminder for you.
And best of all (for Google) developers do not need to add in any
more hooks, as the platform’s APIs provide enough data to work with
(although extra meta-data can be supplied by an application if a
developer wishes).
With search on mobile not generating the same level of revenue as
search on desktop, this extra interaction should benefit Google’s bottom
line… if there is enough buy-in from end users. Searching on what you
are doing on your phone feels a touch creepy to me.
Do not freak out. Yes, a big green icon has magically popped up in your app drawer; no, it isn't bad; and yes, it is pretty much useless.
