Google I/O kicked off this morning with a highly anticipated keynote, announcing innovations and inventions surrounding the new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Google Nexus 7 tablet by Asus, Nexus Q media player, and Google search improvements. The theme was the extension of the Android ecosystem beyond typical mobile devices.
Image courtesy of TechCrunch
Throughout the conference, several engineers demoed Android 4.1 Jelly Bean features in front of the conference’s 5,500 live attendees and over one million streaming viewers. The first demo was explained by Hugo Barra, who buttered up the crowd by introducing Project Butter: a venture into enhancing touch responsiveness, triple buffering, and VSync for an all-around smoother user experience.
Next, Barra and his team went on to showcase some of Android 4.1’s newest features. The first: easier home screen navigation with a focus on aesthetics. For instance, automatically resizing apps and widgets for a more artistic fit and look. Other updates include improved predictive keyboard, refined dictionaries, 18 language additions such as Persian and Thai (while also providing additional support for Hebrew and Arabic), and improved accessibility including integrated Braille support. Additionally, a quicker and clearer camera will come with Jelly Bean, allowing users to snap, review, and delete photos with one simple swipe each.
Android notifications, an area which has always trumped Apple, is receiving another makeover. All notifications are expandable and collapsable, giving you ultimate control every step of the way. Just as before, consumers can still dismiss a long list of annoying notifications with one swipe, but for those who want a more interactive experience, look no further. Without even opening apps, one can favorite a song, share a photo, like a status update, view breaking news headlines and photos, and respond to calendar invites by emailing attendees saying you’re running late (also included are canned responses for ultra-fast convenience). Though this feature is a first for Google, it is a bit of a copycat when it comes to the iOS 6’s “I’ll call you later” presets announced at WWDC earlier this month.
Jelly Bean will be available beginning mid-July, but the SDK Developer Preview rolls out today for those who just can’t wait.
Two of the most exciting updates announced at today’s keynote -- and ones that are bound to give iOS a run for its money -- were the upgrade in Android’s voice recognition software and a completely revamped Google search. The speech recognition advancement gives Siri a run for its money, as the recognizer has shrunk to fit the device more appropriately so that if there’s a poor connection or none at all, the recognizer still understands every word you say. For instance, if you were operating in airplane mode, you can still dictate an entire email without having to route back to the servers.
The redesigned Google search, on the other hand, has been redubbed as Knowledge Graph and has been redeveloped from the ground up. Every search produces a series of “cards,” and displays what it believes to be the right answer to the your search query. Whether you’re asking how tall the Space Needle is or for images of Lolcats, a simple card will appear, acting like Google’s own little genie. But if you’re looking for more information or it isn’t the site you’re looking for, simply swipe the card away and Google will present its usual list of search results.
In an effort to make Google more applicable to everyday life, Google announced Google Now, which will combine your calendar, search history, and location history to give you the most relevant help. Google maps out your entire commute to work, both by figuring out how bad traffic is and automatically adjusting your route for you, and by telling you when the next bus or train arrives so you can get home without missing a beat. For those who want to follow their favorite sports team in real time, Google Now provides up-to-the-minute updates on every inning and quarter, instinctively recognizing your favorite teams by who you’ve recently searched for. For those traveling, Google Now provides translations, currency exchange information, and even a dual clock to display the time back at home. Just like Siri, these cards get smarter and learn your routine the more you use them.
Google Play has also received a bit of an overhaul. As users have managed over 20 billion downloads from Play’s 600,000 apps deeps market, the Android market might finally deserve its fair share of attention. Google hopes to keep all eyes locked on it with clearer quality and better access to blockbuster movies, TV shows, books, and magazines. One of the key highlights also included smart app updates, which allow users to only update the newest part of apps (typically one-third of the size), resulting in faster update times—a win for carriers, developers, and users.
Additionally, Google remains the world’s largest eBook carrier, holding over four million titles, and for the first time allowing users to expand their collection by purchasing (rather than simply renting) movies, TV shows organized by episode or season, and magazines either by issue or subscription. By partnering with Syfy, Focus Features, Paramount, Sony, Disney, ABC, Hearst, and Conde Nast, Google allows users to have access to a dramatic expansion of digital content. Effective today, these updates are launching for all Google Play subscribers for web, mobile, or tablets.
Image courtesy of Google
Which brings us to our next note: the heavily rumored Google tablet. Exhibited today, the seven-inch Galaxy Nexus 7 tablet by Asus is the weight of a paperweight (about 340 grams) and has a sleek look and feel. The tablet contains a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 1280 x 800 HD IPS display, a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC capabilities. Users can customize multiple aspects of the tablet, including the appearance of widgets on your home screen and choosing which content you’d like to see based on your interests and past searches. The tablet also promises advanced graphics and console-worthy animation for gaming, and is also the first tablet to come with Chrome as the standard browser. It offers a few other cool features like the “compass view,” which allows you to virtually tour the inside of restaurants or bars before declaring them your official stomping grounds for the night. But by far the most impressive tablet feature is access to Google Maps while offline, allowing those in remote regions without data connection to regain full access to the app.
Image courtesy of Google
Lastly, Google displayed the brand new Nexus Q. At first glance a mysterious ebony sphere with a ring of LED lights across the center, the Nexus Q harnesses the power of software, hardware, and the cloud to create a small and portable home computer that’s “not another black box”. Instilling the product with a strong focus on socializing media and entertainment, the Nexus Q tightly integrates with Google Play to stream music or movies straight from the market or your library. The device possesses 25 watts, NFC, bluetooth, wifi, a usb port, and the whole shebang, so one sphere fills a room with music, while two can be synced to play music throughout the house. Moreover, your friends can bring theirs to your house and together you can craft a music playlist, pulling content from both devices. Like the other products presented at I/O, the Nexus Q is also available to order today with shipping next month, at $299.
The I/O convention, which traditionally has two meanings—input/output and “Innovation in the Open”—will continue through Friday at the Moscone Center. The conference has come a long way since its inception in 2008, during which Android and Chrome were in their infancy, and has now expanded to include sessions covering Google Maps, Drive, YouTube, Android Beam, and many more. Those who want to stream the rest of the conference can do so at https://developers.google.com/events/io/.
brandonwalkermedia
June 27, 2012 at 3:03pm
RipOff, RipOff, & RipOff. To many of them to count... i see lawsuits coming!
