The holidays are right around the corner, and Google has some early gifts for Android fans. A bunch of new features are rolling out starting today. They span everything from phones, TVs, wearables to Google Messages apps.
Google split its surprise feature into two parts, with a special focus on Google messaging to celebrate 1 billion people using Google’s RCS. There’s a lot of fancy emojis and reactions in the feature drop, but there’s also some basic stuff. You can finally create a profile in Google Messages. The image and display name you choose will be associated with your RCS chat phone number. So you can be sure you’re talking to the right person.
There are so many fun things you can do with chat when you’re talking to that special someone. The new Photo Emoji feature converts any image into an emoji for use in chats. Likewise, there are more animated reaction effects when you use select reactions (see the full list in the Google blog post). Some emojis also animate when used alone. Some phrases also trigger large full-screen animations. Say “It’s snowing” or “I love you” and the screen lights up. There are more than 15 other triggers that Google has not disclosed yet.
Are emojis not for you? Messages also provides more fun with voice messaging. Once you’ve recorded your message, you can choose from different Voice Moods, give your message a visual theme and animated emoticons. Yes, Google is very into emojis lately. Its Android features also include some new emoji interactions. Emoji Kitchen lets you remix selected emojis to get new stickers, and Google has added more emojis to the supported list. Again, it doesn’t tell us all of these, but 📸 + 🤯 is clearly one of them.
If you happen to use Android TV, then you can enjoy some free content. Google recently added free live TV to Android TV, and the selection continues to expand with 10 new channels. If you also have an Android-powered Wear OS device on your wrist, you can control more smart home features without using your phone or remote. The Home app on Wear OS now has access to Home/Away status and Assistant routines. The watch face on Wear OS also has a new Assistant At a Glance shortcut.
On the phone side, Google is adding better support for security keys. You can now set a custom PIN for your FIDO2 key. So even if you lose it, your account will not be compromised. Blind and partially sighted people will also be able to learn more about future networks. Android will use AI to generate descriptions of untagged images and read them aloud via TalkBack. Finally, Google is improving phone and media accessibility. In the coming weeks, Android will get live subtitles in more languages, and you’ll be able to “speak” during calls by typing and having your phone read the text.
Most new features are related to specific applications or Play Services modules. So a few background updates and new app versions should do most of the work. Even if you’re not using the latest version of Android, you can still get something from Google.