Google's 8th annual I/O conference kicked off yesterday at San Francisco's Moscone Center. With over a billion Android users worldwide most interested parties were focussed upon an announcement of the next version of Android. As anticipated Google announced Android M – said to be "the most powerful Android release yet, with hundreds of improvements". Of course there were more announcements; Android Pay is something that Google sorely wants to take off, Google Now will be expanded in functionality, a new IoT platform called Project Brillo was officially announced (as we heard earlier) and Google Photos was introduced to offer a free unlimited cloud "home for all your photos and videos," to top it all Google also announced a new Cardboard VR kit compatible with more phones - including iPhones.
One of the biggest updates in Android M will be something called 'Now on tap'. This is basically a connext sensitive Google Now which will provide assistance based upon what you are looking at on your smartphone at the time. For example if you are listening to a song by Skrillex you might ask a question in the context of that media – such as "what's his real name?" and Google Now will understand what you are enquiring about.
Further improvements in Android M include better battery life. 'Doze mode' could make big improvements to your battery life if your device is just left stationary for a while. On a Nexus 9 tablet the new battery mode extended the battery life up to 50 per cent – yet all alarms and high priority messages come through as normal.
A key security change has been made with app permissions. The revamped permissions process will allow users to go and change them later. Also an app should only ask for permissions the first time it needs a certain amount of access. An example is a photo app asking to use the camera; later if you want to share a photo from that app it will ask you for permission to access your contacts.
Android Pay
Google spent quite a lot of time talking up its new smart payment method, Android Pay. It's "the simple and secure way to pay with your Android phone," says the firm. It's a lot like Apple Pay and will be accepted at many of the same outlets/stores/apps – it will "soon be accepted at over 700,000 store locations" in the US. Your phone will need an NFC chip and you unlock it to agree to pay or can use a fingerprint verification – if your hardware has it.
The Android Pay app will be available on Google Play soon, we are told.
Google Photos
Google has taken many of the functionality of Google+ photos and created a new app. Google Photos is headlined as "a home for all your photos and videos," and indeed it could be as it offers free unlimited cloud storage for your personal media. The moderate restrictions of the free service are that images up to 16MP and videos up to 1080p will be stored in their original resolutions. Higher res media will be downsampled.
The app isn't just about storage. It is also good for organising, finding, tagging and sharing your precious memories. The functionality goes further to allow you to create collages, animations, movies with soundtracks, and more. Sharing is nice and simple as an ordinary .html link is generated for recipients of your sharing message. Unlike some other Google I/O announcements, Photos is available straight away on Android, iOS and the web.
