(Credit: Google)
BARCELONA–Google opened MWC 2024 with a grab-bag of new features for Android phones. And as in previous Android feature drops, you don’t have to look hard here to spy AI.
An advance copy of the company’s announcement, posted Monday, leads off with the news that Android’s Messages app will now let you talk to an entity that we trust isn’t in any of your contacts lists: Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, renamed earlier this month from Google Bard.
Google’s post features a GIF of Gemini suggesting ways to optimize a joke that was already in dad-joke territory. The results suggest that humor remains something best left to analog jokesters.
Another new feature, earlier spotted in Android code by 9to5Google, puts AI to work inside Android Auto to reduce the cognitive load for drivers by auto-summarizing texts and chats and suggesting situationally relevant replies and actions, like sharing your estimated arrival time.
Accessibility also figures in this feature drop. Google Maps will be able to speak important details about nearby places, such as hours of business, when you point your phone’s camera at your surroundings. And Lookout, the vision-assistance app Google debuted in 2019, expands its support for auto-generated, English-language captions of images to places outside the US.
For the Android versions of Google Docs, the news involves adding the option of leaving handwritten annotations in documents in your choice of colors. Writing on a phone’s screen with swipes of a fingertip may not allow for long-form comments, but “huh?” probably comes off more forcefully when drawn in large virtual red ink.
Google’s Fitbit app, meanwhile, supports the Health Connect enclave shipped in Android 14 to show data from apps that have been updated to work with this secure data platform co-developed by Google and Samsung.
One of these Android updates will improve a single third-party app: The output-switch shortcut available on Android’s home screen now works with Spotify in addition to Google’s YouTube Music, allowing faster switching between playback devices when casting audio from your device.
Finally, Google’s smartwatch operating system will gain two features that Apple’s watchOS has had for years: Wear OS will be able to show passes stored in Google Wallet, such as boarding passes and frequent-customer cards, and display turn-by-turn transit directions.
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