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Google I/O 2021: Major announcements

T

he Google I/O is an annual developer conference where Google announces new hardware, software, and various updates for its existing apps and services. The event is taking place from Tuesday, May 18, through Friday, May 21. Tuesday’s main attraction was the keynote from Sundar Pichai and other Google executives. To save your time and effort jumping from one news post to another, here’s a recap of every major announcement and development that covered in Google I/O 2021.

Android 12 Beta 1

Here it is, right off the bat, the announcement most people were waiting for — the full reveal of Android 12. We finally have a much better idea of what the future of Android holds, especially the new Material You design language. Android 12 will take device personalization up a notch by automatically theming your notification panel, lock screen, quick settings, and other UI parts from your wallpaper. There is a confirmation on multiple features which are introduced in Android 12 which I will cover in a separate blog.

Material You

Google officially showcased its new design language, Material You, at Google I/O 2021. Material You is bold, colorful, and refreshing, with the main focus on offering users endless customization through its dynamic theming capabilities. Material You will not be limited to just Android and will be coming to all major Google products, including Wear OS, Chrome OS, smart home devices, and more.

Wear OS and Samsung's Tizen are merging

After neglecting the Wear OS platform for so many years, Google is finally getting serious about its smartwatch OS. Google’s Wear OS platform and Samsung’s Tizen are merging to form one super platform named “Wear.” It should lead to solid boosts in battery life, smoother application start-ups, and up to 30% faster app load times. On top of that, some of the most popular features from Fitbit will also be making their way to Wear OS

Smart Canvas

Smart Canvas platform makes it easier to work between different Google apps like Docs and Sheets with greater flexibility. If you need to, you can bring a Google Meets call right into your team Doc and just keep working.

Project Starline: Brings far-away family members to you

In this COVID-19 pandemic, we all know just how hard it’s been to spend time apart from loved ones. Thanks to the video conferencing apps which allow us to see our loved ones no matter at what distance they are. Google’s new Starline platform creating a 3D model of your family member while you talk to them.


Google Maps: New features

  • Eco-friendly routes and Safer routing are two new features coming to Google Maps.
  • Eco-friendly routes will help reduce environmental footprint by suggesting routes that will lead to lower fuel consumption.
  • On the other hand, Safer routing will use AI to suggest the safest route for your destination by taking into account current road, traffic, and weather conditions.
  • Finally, Live View, which provides augmented reality-based navigation, is also receiving some new updates. The new Live View will be easier to access, more dynamic, and can be used to navigate indoor builds too.

Google Photos: New features

  • Google Photos will let you lock your private photos in a secure folder that can only be accessed by you. This is coming to Pixel phones first and later to other Android devices
  • Photos will gain a machine-learning trick that will let it create an album of photos that have three or more similar objects, shapes, or colors and highlight them in Memories.

Better security and digital car keys


Have you ever lost your car keys? Don't worry Google is now bringing your car key on a phone. Google has announced that select Pixel and Samsung Galaxy devices will double as a car key using NFC. Essentially, you can unlock your car exactly as you would with a key — provided your car is compatible.

Meet LaMDA

One of the fascinating things coming out of Google I/O 2021 is LaMDA, a conversational language model built on Google’s neural network architecture called Transformer. Unlike other language models, which are trained to answer queries, LaMDA is trained on dialogue and can engage in free-flowing conversations on pretty much any topic. LaMDA is still in the research and development phase, but it will likely be used to power Google Assistant and other Google products in the future.


That's all for this blog. Here I am attaching a keynote video from the Google I/O 2021 if you are interested to look into more in-depth information :-)



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