Related
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/01/cloud-printing-on-go.html
This has a lot of potential and i hope that it will eventually spread to browsers and apps beyond those made by Google. From what i understand the ability to use this feature is already available to Chrome Beta users, but will we see it integrated into the likes of Internet Explorer etc?
I suppose one possibility would be having the function built into the Google Toolbar so that people can use it no matter what Browser they use.
Cloud computing is beginning to get interesting, what with sync between my Android device and my online apps and now this. I wonder what else we'll see in future?
Perhaps you purchased your
new Android phone because
you’re really into the latest
wireless technology, or
perhaps you purchased it
because you’ve been admiring
new phone covers on Etsy
(totally adorbs, btw). Either
way, we hope our top 10
Android tricks help you
uncover new functionality in
your smartphone.
1
Access a hidden menu
We’re not sure why you’d need
a hidden menu, but if you enjoy
living your life in the shadows
and the dark of the night, read
up on how to create and access
a hidden menu from your home
screen. You’ll be able to keep
both spies and perhaps your
children out of your secret
ploys.
2
Easy Phone Sync
If you think of Apple’s iOS and
Google’s Android system as
mortal enemies, consider the
Easy Phone Sync a skilled
mediator between the two. If
your desktop has iTunes and you
want those songs on your
Android phone, download the
Easy Phone Sync so the systems
can talk to one another and
share data.
3
Near Field Communication
If your Android has Near Field
Communication (NFC)
functionality, you can use your
phone to swipe a “tag” you
create on an electronic device.
Swiping the tag will tell the
device to do whatever it is that
you have pre-programmed it to
do, like turn on the lights in
your house or fire up your
Jacuzzi.
4
Swype keyboard
If you have a strange index
finger twitch, or perhaps bulky
fingers that are constantly
causing your keyboard to
autocorrect improperly, the
Swype app will allow you to text
or search without ever having to
pick your finger up from the
keyboard. Utilizing Swype will
reduce your autocorrect
embarrassment and risks of
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, all in
one easy download.
5
Widgets
We love widgets. Mostly, we
love saying the word
“widgets.” But widgets are
actually pretty cool, too. They
allow users to check out lots of
important information in one
spot on the home screen, like
news, weather and traffic. Here
is Techland’s list of the best
Android widgets for 2013.
6
Control phone from
computer
The AirDroid app is amazing. It
allows you to send text messages
through your phone from your
desktop computer. It also allows
you to locate your phone from
your desktop, and move all your
data to and from your phone.
7
Talk to text
Please don’t be the person that
drives and texts at the same
time. Really, there is no need to
do something so dangerous. Just
hit the microphone button when
your keyboard is open for
texting or searching, and
Android’s powerful voice
technology will do a pretty
bang-up job of understanding
you.
8
Utilize Dropbox
Consider the Dropbox app as a
Cloud system for all your
devices. Although you can
always back up your files on
your Google Drive account,
Dropbox adds a layer of
functionality to the process. If
you use Dropbox on your
Android phone, all of your
uploaded files become available
on all of your devices, and many
users find the interface easier to
navigate than Google Drive.
9
Get organized
As of April 2013, the Android
operating system boasted over
800,000 apps in its app
marketplace, Google Play. Even
if you’re not app-happy, it’s
probably a smart idea to
organize the apps you use by
type so that you can easily find
what you need on your phone.
The Android operating system
allows users to create folders
for their apps. Check out this
tutorial for information about
how to create folders.
10
Use Maps offline
Nothing
is as
irritating
as
looking
up
directions on Google Maps and
then running into difficulties
with internet connection once
you’re already en route. Next
time you look up directions,
click on the button “Make
Available Offline” so you can use
your map regardless of
connectivity.
Hit The Thanks Button If I Helped You
which one is the trick part?
all i get throu the text is just explanation about the app
but i guess it might help for noob thou,
Hi everyone,
I always thought that Nexus devices comes with a pure AOSP version with some little closed-source extras, like GApps (Google Mobile Services, Play Store, Gmail, YouTube, Maps...) or hardware drivers. And for a "librist" like me, it seems fine : OS and main userspace parts are opensourced, and Google services are closed-source. All was fine in my beautiful world.
But with some search, I discovered that every time that Google push an AOSP apps on the Play Store, it is actually a closed-clone of the AOSP one.
For example :
AOSP Keyboard is not Google Keyboard (=missing gesture)
Camera is not Google Camera (=missing Photosphere)
Launcher is not "Google Experience Launcher (GEL)" (=missing Google Now Integration, normal, but also transparency)
Music is not Play Music
Search is not Google Now
recently : Email (not Gmail)
etc.
I was not worried about "additionnal closed source services/app of Google in Android" as they are what they are : additionnal.
But the new politic of Google seems to be "we have our Touchwizz/Sense of our own, now".
The main problem is : as far as I can see on the GIT source and with Android Emulator, when Google begins to develop his "alternative closed source apps of an AOSP opensource apps", the AOSP apps seems to be abandonware.
You can compare the look of Google Search (and disable Google Now, to compare properly without Google closed services) and AOSP Search. AOSP Search seems to be from FroYo design... The same with Music player.
What's your point of this situation? Does Google try to make his own front-end interface to AOSP Android like Samsung Touchwiz or HTC Sense?
What devices comes with AOSP by default and not "Android by Google" now, if Nexus is no more the case?
BONUS : Jean-Baptiste Queru, head of AOSP, resigns from Google. I don't know what happens to replace him...
Note : I am French so, if my English is not easily-readable, please forgive me .
*bump*
Here is a point of view of an official Android developers from Google (source : arstechnica[DOT]com/information-technology/2014/02/neither-microsoft-nokia-nor-anyone-else-should-fork-android-its-unforkable/?comments=1&post=26199423)
There is a good discussion to be had about Microsoft using Android, and a lot of good reasons for them to not do so... which makes it especially unfortunate that instead this was turned into yet another article here of increasingly specious and misleading claims about the "open-sourceness" of Android and Google's hidden plan to Control Android And Then The World.
First, let's make a clear statement. If Android was to be in the same position as Windows is in the PC industry, we'd have a radically more open computing environment, where it is a lot easier for small players to compete against the dominant platform on a more level playing field. I don't think anyone can argue against this. When we were designing and implementing Android at Google, this was actually one of our goals -- to create a more level playing field for everyone -- and that design perspective hasn't significantly changed over the years.
So let’s start with the setup:
Quote:
Google has worked to make Android functionally unforkable, with no practical way to simultaneously fork the platform and take advantage of its related strengths: abundant developers, and abundant applications.
Already we see the clear bias that the article is going to take. There is however another way to state this: Google provides a lot of value on top of Android, with an ecosystem that is difficult to compete with, of cloud-based applications and services that are useful to users and developers. This is at least as true a way to describe as the quoted statement from the article, and I will argue it more accurately states the situation.
The arguments start out soft, but still misleading:
Quote:
The first is the Android Open Source Platform (AOSP) codebase. This provides the basic bones of a smartphone operating system: it includes Android's version of the Linux kernel, the Dalvik virtual machine, and portions of the basic user interface (settings app, notification panel, lock screen).
AOSP is far more than the basic bones of a smartphone operating system. It is a complete smartphone operating system. The examples you provide for what it includes are very misleading -- what about the launcher, contacts app, dialer and phone app, calendar app, camera and gallery and on? The fact is, if you build AOSP today and put it on a phone, you will have a pretty fully functioning platform.
The thing you don’t have is stuff related to cloud services, and this is not an evil secret plan of Google, but a simple fact we have been clear about from the initial design of the platform: Android as an open-source platform simply can’t provide any cloud services, because those don’t run on the device where the platform code runs. This is a key point that seems to be completely missed. If you want to understand what Android is, how it is designed, and how the pieces fit together, you must understand this point.
One of the things that is interesting about platforms today vs. the traditional desktop is that these cloud services are becoming increasingly central to the core platform experience. This presents a special challenge to an open-source platform, which can’t really provide such cloud services as part of the standard platform implementation. In Android our solution to this is to design the platform so that cloud services can plug-in and integrated with it in various ways. These may be stand-alone apps like Google Play Music, they may be plug-in services like the calendar and contacts sync providers, they may be Google proprietary APIs on top of the platform like Google Play services.
Note, however, that in all of these cases the platform has been designed to provide an open, flexible, and rich enough API that these Google services can be delivered using the same standard SDK that other app developers use. This is part of the goal of creating a more level playing field for everyone. (There are some exception where things are very difficult to safely expose to developers, but they are rare -- the Play Store’s privileges for managing your apps is one, and even there we do provide in the platform side-loading APIs so that other app stores can be implemented.)
So, GMS is Google’s proprietary code implemented on top of Android for interacting with Google’s services. There is nothing nefarious about it being proprietary -- it is interacting with Google’s proprietary back-end services, so of course it is proprietary.
Thus this makes perfect sense:
Quote:
The split between AOSP and GMS is not constant, either. Google has slowly been migrating more and more functionality to GMS. For example, in the latest Nexus 5, the core phone user interface—the thing that you use to launch apps and show icons—has been rolled into the GMS Search app.
What has happened here? Google now has their own launcher that integrates with Google’s back-end services. And what is wrong with this? Why is this worse than Facebook or Yahoo doing their own proprietary launcher? It is bizarre to complain about this, especially when Google has open-sourced everything else in their launcher except the parts that are specific to their proprietary services!
And this is the same thing:
Quote:
Similarly, APIs have made the move. AOSP contains a location API, but GMS contains a newer, better one, with additional features. Google encourages developers to use the GMS API, and the AOSP Location API mostly dates back to Android 1.0, and hasn't seen any substantial changes since Android 1.5.
First, it s very misleading to act like the platform’s location manager has been unmaintained since Android 1.5. Important features like passive providers and criteria-based updates were added much later than that; but, even ignoring verifiable facts, the Google Play services location APIs didn’t appear until last year, so what you are actually implying with this is that Google basically didn’t do any significant improvements to location from 2009 to 2013. Probably not true.
The reason for the introduction of Google’s location API, however, is again because of back-end services. Location has become increasingly dependent on cloud services: for a while now network-based location, but increasingly more things. We went for a long time with parts of the platform’s LocationManager basically not implemented because it couldn’t be, with the need for some proprietary thing to be dropped in on top of it to have a fully functioning API. As time went on this became an increasingly bad situation because we don’t want our platform to be defining APIs that it can’t also provide an implementation of, to serve as the basis for everyone to share and a reference for how it should work. So, the decision was made that Google should take responsibility of further evolution of that API since that evolution is increasingly tied to cloud services.
Quote:
Each new release increases the level of integration with Google's own services, and Google is moving more and more new functionality to GMS, leaving AOSP a barebones husk.
This is such an exaggeration that it is really hard to know how to address. AOSP is a barebones husk? Please. AOSP is far richer and more powerful today than it was in 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, or 3.0. And most importantly, one of the things we have been doing over the years is providing increasingly rich facilities for any cloud services provider to plug in to the platform. For example, in the most recent 4.4 release we have our very extensive new storage framework API, which Google uses to provide their Google Drive services to any application, and allows any other cloud storage provider to do the same thing, operating on equal footing with Google.
Quote:
That's not a small category, either, since features such as in-app purchasing are in GMS.
This gets emphasized as a significant point, but, honestly, how would you propose that in-app purchasing not go through GMS? Some general platform API to allow the app to do an in-app purchase with whoever wants to be a “purchase provider?” I can’t imagine this being a solution that people will be happy with.
Quote:
Technically, however, a company with sufficient development resources could provide its own GMS replacement. The overhead would be not insignificant, especially as—to ensure optimal compatibility—the replacement would have to replicate not just correct functioning, but any bugs or quirks of the GMS implementation.
Of course, the vast vast vast majority of the work here is implementing the back-end services in the cloud, not the proprietary glue code that runs on the device. Failing to address this is deeply missing about what is going on.
Quote:
There are also lots of little awkward aspects of the GMS API; it includes such capabilities as "share with Google+" which few companies have any real counterpart to.
In other words you don’t have your own social network, so you can’t implement Google’s API for sharing to its social network? Okay, then just have the API do nothing? Or heck, share to Facebook?
Quote:
Another example: there is an API for handling turn-based multiplayer gaming. A company could implement this API and have its own server infrastructure for managing the gaming sessions, but obviously these gaming sessions would be completely separate from Google's gaming sessions, fragmenting the player base in a way that game developers are unlikely to be keen on.
Now this could be taken as just a good argument for why Microsoft wouldn’t get as much of a competitive advantage by using AOSP, since they would still be competing with Google’s cloud services. But then it is immediately followed by:
Quote:
As an added bonus, should the ultimate resolution of Google's long-running legal battle with Oracle be that APIs are, in fact, copyrightable, this kind of wholesale reimplementation of GMS would become legally actionable. Google could, if it chose to, shut it down through the courts.
Where in the world did this come from? Google is the one fighting against that. Microsoft actually filed an amicus brief supporting Oracle. Yet you write this almost as if this case would serve part of Google’s evil plan to control Android?
Quote:
The second option—AOSP with a few extra custom extras—has the upside of providing an opportunity for Microsoft to integrate its own services… It would certainly mean omitting any high-profile title using in-app purchasing, so, say, Plants vs. Zombies 2 or the latest iteration of Angry Birds would be out.
It’s strange to focus on in-app purchasing here. The issue is that you don’t have the Google Play store, so you need to get app developers to publish their apps on your own store. In fact providing a compatible in-app purchasing API and otherwise making it easy for them to publish their app without changing it is probably the lesser problem.
Quote:
Google has pushed very significant pieces of functionality into GMS, including messaging and the Chrome browser. The AOSP counterparts are buggy, feature deprived, and by at least some accounts, barely maintained. If a company wants to use AOSP without GMS, it has a lot of work to do if it wants to produce a high quality experience. The open source parts just aren't good enough.
Again the exaggerations. Chrome is available open-source as Chromium (of course without the integration with Google’s back-end services, but why in the world would Microsoft want those?). What parts of AOSP are “buggy” compared to Google’s stuff? In fact a lot of Google’s proprietary apps are built on top of the corresponding AOSP app -- that includes Google’s Launcher, Calendar, Email, and even Gmail now. Messaging has diverged from Hangouts, but Hangouts is deeply integrated into Google services, and there is a similar situation with Music. It would be nice if some of these apps were better maintained, but (a) there are lots of equivalent apps (often based off the AOSP version) that people have written which you could license and use, and (b) implementing these apps is pretty small potatoes compared to all the cloud services Google provides.
Quote:
For Microsoft, the effort required to build a GMS workalike on top of AOSP is going to be comparable to the effort required to build the Windows Phone shell and APIs on top of Windows.
Again, the vast majority of work here is providing the back-end cloud services. Not, as keeps being implied, the proprietary bits that Google has running on Android.
Quote:
Moreover, it still implicitly gives Google control over the platform. Various aspects of how Android is used are determined by the underlying APIs: sharing between applications, for example, is done in a particular Android way. Any platform using Android in this way would have only a limited ability to take the platform in a different direction from the one Google chose.
Okay this is just weird. Yes, the Android platform has a well-defined sharing facility, and if you want to have an Android-compatible platform you will want it to work the same way. Just like, I don’t know, Ubuntu has a C library and you probably don’t want to change that. How in the world is this different from every other open-source platform in the world? How is Google being all controlling here?
Quote:
The fourth option—use AOSP with an entirely new software stack on top—gives freedom and flexibility, but to what end? The kernel isn't the important bit.
Wait, what? The only way I can figure out how to interpret this is to suggest that they use Linux (the kernel) but nothing above it. That can’t be what you mean, right? I honestly have no idea what this is supposed to be saying, except that it again seems to be implying Google is being all nefarious.
Quote:
If Android were an open platform in the way that Firefox OS or Ubuntu for smartphones were an open platform, the forking suggestion would make more sense.
I’ll admit I am not super-familiar with these two, so I have a question: what are the things that they have that are not in AOSP?
And finally we have further blanket statements about how Google’s goal is to make Android increasingly closed, AOSP isn’t real open source, etc, etc. I’ll just leave with the final sentence:
Quote:
Suggestions that Microsoft scrap its own operating system in favor of such a fork simply betray a lack of understanding of the way Google has built the Android platform.
Actually, I don’t think you have an understanding of how Google has built Android. I have been actively involved in designing and implementing Android since early on, and it was very much designed to be an open-source platform. Part of that design was to allow Google (or anyone) to build integrated cloud-based services on top of it, and that aspect of Android design has gotten richer as the years go on. What you are concerned about is not a design problem in Android, but the richness of Google’s cloud-based services.
At least Android creates a much more equal playing field for others to compete with Google’s services than is provided by the proprietary platforms it is competing with. I also think a good argument can be made that Android’s strategy for addressing today’s need to integrate cloud services into the base platform is an entirely appropriate model for a “real” open-source platform to take.
Click to expand...
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New Relic is currently incentivizing new customers with three free months of Code School classes. But really, the bribe shouldn’t be necessary. We know, this sounds like the type of hyped-up pitch you might hear on a bad infomercial, but here at XDA, New Relic APM has completely revolutionized our ability to debug application processes, allowing us to speed up the site while reducing server costs. When they wanted to sponsor the site this month, we were thrilled to promote a product that we both know and use (we are very happy paying customers and have been for years). We’ve explored all options for monitoring site performance, but nothing comes close to the insight we gain from New Relic. Every web developer and mobile app developer should at least consider using New Relic. The company offers free trials and lite versions that are free-for-life on both its web app and mobile products, so there’s no reason not to.
XDA has a complex, layered infrastructure with html front-end caching, data store caching via Memcache and APC, and of course, a large database. When the site occasionally slowed down, it was impossible to determine why. On our local and staging development environments, we were able to trace application processes to determine hangups, but when working at scale, serving live pages to millions of users, we couldn’t get the same insight. After installing New Relic’s PHP plugin (they have plugins for just about every application server type), we instantly gained the ability to dig deeper into the application server processes to see where bottlenecks were occurring. The New Relic plugin software allows us to trace all the way back through the application to explore specific functions and database queries and see exactly how long they are taking to execute. We have even been able to use New Relic to assist third-party application developers to optimize their apps to work better on our servers.
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Developers often come to us needing help debugging slow processes, and we almost always recommend installing New Relic to trace hard-to-find bottlenecks in both web and mobile applications. And today, we’re publicly making that same recommendation to you. Try it out for free. Deploy and get three free months of Code School.
The Android M developer preview was launched today at Google I/O 2015 in San Francisco. Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of products at Google, introduced the conference and said that the company had "gone back to basics" with the new version of Android. While Android Lollipop introduced a brand new design and aesthetic, Android M is bringing some much-needed stability and usability improvements, which might not be as immediately arresting, but may prove to be significant long-term additions.
Dave Burke, vice president of engineering at Google, followed Pichai on stage to outline six of the major new features you can expect to see in Android M.
Which phones will get the Android M update first?
1. App permissions
First up, app permissions. As had previously been speculated, app permissions have been overhauled in Android M, with users now being able to choose to accept or deny individual permissions as they see fit. Permissions have also been simplified.
Permissions will now be requested the first time you try to use a feature, not at the point of installation. "You don't have to agree to permissions that don't make sense to you," Burke said, and used WhatsApp to give an example of how this works.
If you want to record a voice message, WhatsApp will prompt you with a one-time request for permission to use your mic: if you still wish to give it access and record the message, you can, but you don't have to. Android M is giving users greater control of the information apps can access, and this is a truly positive step forward for Android.
You can modify the permissions granted to apps at a later date in your Settings, or you can view permissions by type and see which apps have that permission granted. It's all about giving the user complete control over their Android.
2. Web experience
Google has been exploring trends in the way web content is consumed to provide a better user-experience when interacting with websites and apps. "Chrome Custom Tabs is a new feature that gives developers a way to harness all of Chrome's capabilities, while still keeping control of the look and feel of the experience," said Burke.
Chrome Custom Tabs will allow apps to open a customized Chrome window on top of the active app, instead of launching the Chrome app separately. This will provide a faster and more intuitive user-experience when navigating between apps and the web.
Chrome Custom Tabs supports automatic sign-in, saved passwords, autofill, and multi-process security to assist the integration of the app and web experience. So, for example, a Pinterest custom tab will have a Pinterest share button embedded in it, can include custom overflow menu options and doesn't require the Pinterest developers to build their own web browser.
3. Fingerprint support
Google will "standardize support" for fingerprint scanners on phones running Android M. The new functionality will allow fingerprint scanners to be used not only to unlock phones, but to make purchases shopping in real-life or within Play Store apps.
Of course, your device will need a hardware fingerprint scanner to begin with, but with Google's full support, expect to see these appear on many more devices in the future.
4. Mobile payments
Android Pay is Google's new mobile payments system designed to make the checkout process easier and faster. Google is aiming to provide "simplicity, security, and choice," with Android Pay, allowing you to use your existing credit cards to pay for products in more than 700,000 stores in the US.
Compatible with any device housing NFC capabilities (and running 4.4 KitKat or above), the Android Pay platform is being supported by American Express, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover, as well as carriers such as AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Google's response to Apple pay is here.
5. App links
"When a user selects a weblink from somewhere, Android doesn't know whether to show it in a web-browser, or some other app that claims support for the link," this was the problem facing the Google developers before Android M.
You may be familiar with the "Open with" dialogue box which appears when you try to open a link within an app on Android. You might be asked if you want to open a link with YouTube, or with Chrome, for example.
App links are being changed in M so that Android has a greater awareness of which apps can open content directly, instead of stopping users every time with the dialog box. If you tap a Twitter link in an email, for example, the Twitter app will open automatically instead of prompting you to ask if you want to use Twitter to view it.
This is almost a blink-and-you'll-miss-it improvement, but it's representative of Google's attention to detail: Android M is probably going to feel more usable without the user ever understanding why.
6. Power and charging
Android M makes use of a new function known as Doze to improve device standby time. By using motion detectors, Android will recognize when devices haven’t been interacted with for a while, such as when a person is asleep or a device has been left on a table, to reduce background processes.
Burke said that Google tested two Nexus 9 devices, one running Lollipop and one running the Android M preview, and learned that M will provide up to two-times longer standby time. Even in Doze mode, your Android can still start alarms or notify you of priority notifications.
Android M also supports USB Type-C which provides faster charging, and lets users charge other devices with their phone.
Android M release date
The Android M Developer Preview is available today for Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and Nexus Player, and the final version is due to launch in Q3, 2015.
What else is in new in Android M?
Auto Backup and Restore for Apps
Possibly the most interesting aspect of Android M not discussed in Google’s I/O keynote speech was Android Auto Backup and Restore for Apps. This feature will be used in conjunction with Google Drive to automatically backup app data and settings with a file size of 25 MB or less.
These backups occur no more than once per day, and run only when the device is idle and connected to Wi-Fi and power. The uploaded data does not count towards your Google Drive storage quota, and is encrypted.
If you lose your device or delete the app, your previous progress will be restored the next time you install it, and it even works with apps which are side-loaded or accessed through a third-party app store.
New app drawer
One of the most immediately noticeable visual changes to Android M is the new app drawer. This now scrolls vertically instead of horizontally, and is held against a white background, rather than a muted shade of your homepage wallpaper. Across the top of the menu you will see your four most recently used apps, and down the left-hand side are the letters of the alphabet.
Android M RAM manager
Google has introduced a new RAM manager to Android M with the aim of providing users with more accurate and comprehensible information regarding the maximum and average RAM usage of apps.
The menu can be found in Settings > Apps > Options (three dots button) > Advanced > Memory. Though it's a little hard to navigate to, the page offers a far clearer insight into app demands, and the overall effect they will have on your device.
With a reading of an individual app's RAM consumption, as well as how often it is running in the background, users will be able to better determine which apps should be removed in endless bid to increase device performance and battery life.
Android M even includes a simple bar at the top of the page displaying the current performance status of a person's handset; if it says "good performance", you're likely running an efficient set of apps.
Adoptable Storage Devices
Though Google has in the past tried to step away from external storage use (the reason why none of its Nexus devices house a microSD card slot), it appears that Android M is striking a compromise.
Adoptable Storage Devices is Google's new storage feature which essentially takes an external storage source (such as an SD card or USB drive) and formats it like an internal storage space. This means that app and personal data can be moved freely between a devices internal storage and its "adopted" storage source.
Adopted storage devices are wrapped in a layer of encryption to soothe security concerns and both microSD cards and USB OTG drives are currently supported.
Google Now
Google Now has been improved upon once again in Android M. Focusing on three key ares: being aware of different contexts, providing answers and helping you take action, Google Now is now smarter than ever.
Google Now's context awareness understand over 100 million different places, so when you ask ''How far is it to there?'' Google Now know exactly which ''there'' you're referring to. This awareness is compounded by Google's Knowledge Graph, which understands one billion different entities, from sports teams to gas stations, TV shows to recipes.
Google Now is also rolling out a pilot program called ''Now on Tap'' with 100 popular apps. Now on Tap provides Google Now-like content right where you are, without having to leave the app you're in. So if you're in Spotify and say ''Ok Google, what is his real name?'' Now on Tap will know you're talking about the musician you're listening to and provide search results right there an then.
The same goes for content in emails. If someone asks you a question about a restaurant and to not forget something on your way home, Now on Tap can automatically pop up a restaurant card with Maps info, Yelp, OpenTable and the dialer, as well as offer to set a reminder for whatever it was you were supposed to not forget.
Google Chrome
Chrome is also leaner and faster than ever before. Initially revamped with Android One devices in mind, where stable and speedy internet connections are not always possible, Chrome's new optimizations are set to arrive for everyone.
Chrome is now aware of network strength and can modify what you see as a result. For example, if your connection is bad, you might see colored squares rather than preview images in Search results. Optimized web pages will load four times faster and use 80 percent fewer bytes. You'll also see a memory usage reduction of up to 80 MB. Chrome will also support offline mode.
Google Photos
As expected, Google pulled the wraps off its new Google Photos service. Previously a part of Google+, Google Photos is now standalone photo and video storage and sharing service that provides unlimited free storage for up to 16 MP photos and 1080p video. That is seriously impressive.
The Google Photos service stores high-quality compressed versions of your photos and movies but doesn't store anything on your device, so you can search through thousands of photos at high speed and without bogging your device down with gigabytes of photos.
Popular features like Auto-Awesome and Stories are a key highlight, accessible through a new Assistant feature, which will automatically suggest creative uses of your images and footage. Through simple pinch gestures you can see tiled images for particular days, weeks, months or even years and then zoom right back in at any point you like.
Google Photos is also powerful for search, as you'd expect. You can search by People, Places, Things and Types, which are all automatically created, and you can drill down in each of those categories to see, for example, every picture you have of a particular person, all without ever tagging them.
Sharing is also a breeze. You don't even need you contacts to have the Google Photos app. You can simply share a link that they can view in Chrome. If they are logged in they can easily download an entire album in seconds.
Are you impressed by what Google has been up to in Android M? What would you have liked to have seen?
First off, if you're going to copy & paste something from another Android site, it helps to at least give credit to the original writer of the article (I have supplied a link to the original article below). Second, please post in the correct forum. The Apps & Games forum is the wrong place for this sort of post.
http://www.androidpit.com/android-m-release-date-news-features-name
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