Google I/O 2017 Highlights

Celebrating 2 billion active users worldwide, today Google finally wrapped up it's yearly tech conference, popularly known as the Google I/O, where we could get to know a lot of upcoming and intriguing stuff that google has in stores for us. Ahead you'll find the highlights of Google's 2017 keynote.

More about Android O...

The most anticipated topic of the event was Google's latest android update. Although we couldn't get to know what the 'O' would stand for, still keeping hopes high for Oreo, but Google did tell a lot about it. For starters, there wouldn't be much changes regarding UI, but a minor tweaks, like the notification shades would show darker greys, however the most noticeable change was the small dot above app icons to make users aware that the app has notifications. Long pressing such an app would bring up a pop-up which would show it's notification contents along with the usual options found since Nougat. Other than that Google promises better battery and ram management and would set up strict rules for apps consuming more battery. Google also introduced Android play Protect for better app and user security. Regarding the availability, Google has stated that the final version would be available at Q3 this year, it did launch beta version for it today, available on Pixel and Nexus devices. Google also provided a timeline for it's upcoming beta updates following this year.

Google Home gets Better

Google's answer to Amazon's Alexa powered Echo, Google Home has been in the buzz for quite sometime but people still couldn't get a finalized version of it yet. However, Google has added more features to it, which potentially turns it into a phone. Yes, just as Alexa, Google Home can now respond to commands like "Call Mom" by actually placing that call. This feature would be available to all the Home user's in the United States and Canada, although it would support only one number, and would only place outgoing calls. Also, the calls made to other people would be completely free, as Google stated. Also, Google Home's smart speaker gets support for more apps like HBO Now, Hulu, SoundCloud, Deezer, and more, and would be able to control these apps to certain commands. Google Home also gets a better understanding of which device to interact with according to a specific command. As for example, one could say "Ok Google, show my events for today" and based on your speech distance it could show that on your smartphone or your Chromecast connected TV. Ask for directions on the map, and it would display on your smartphone. All this stuff Google is promising to bring in such an attractive and hassle-free way, shows the amount of hard work Google's employees have done.

Google Lens

Google Lens is the next big step towards handsfree living, well, almost. Google Lens allows users to find information regarding any such item as being shown by their camera. As for example if anyone would point their camera lens to a flower, Google Lens could recognize it's type. If anyone pointed it towards a restaurant, Google would display it's reviews and ratings and timings. Google is trying to bring this feature to as many phones as possible by the end of this year, which would be a great addition to our daily lives.

Google I/O Other Highlights

Google Assistant on iPhone
Google has brought it's smartphone virtual assistant to iPhone and iPad, to tackle Siri on it's home turf, starting today. Featuring as a stand alone app, the Assistant would provide essentially all the stuff that it did on Android, like voice search, command and control, etc.

Android Go
Google seems to have taken on from where it left off since it released Android One initiative back at 2014. Google already has 2 billion active devices, and by the end of the year will go for the next billion using Android Go.
Android Go, which is built on Android O, comes with a “rebuilt” set of Google apps that require less memory, storage, and data to run, and focusses on entry-level devices, with restricted data availability. It would also have it's own version of the Play store, which would feature apps best optimised for low-end devices, like YouTube Go. This OS is supposed to run on 512MB memory, or less. Although it is yet to be launched, Google seemed pretty confident with this initiative.

Standalone VR Headsets
Although much wasn't said about hardware this year, but Google did hint about DayDream VR being able to run on it's own, that is, not requiring to be powered by a phone or a PC, and being completely a wireless experience for users. It is supposed to feature a way of tracking the space around the user to create a virtual environment, which Google calls "WorldSense". It is as simple as putting it on your head, and voilà, it works. It would be done with the help of HTC and Lenovo, although no specific release dates has been confirmed.
https://twitter.com/Google/status/864914925935894529/photo/1

All about AI...

Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, seemed obvious enough stating the fact that the company's further expansion would be bases mostly on cloud based Artificial Intelligence. Most of Google's way to create AI, is by a process they call "Learning, to learn". That is, the machine based tracking system tracks all sorts of data and user activity to create a sort of information table and would arrange them in a manner that would suit the user most. This kind of autonomous behavior is achieved by a method called the TensorFlow platform, which Sundar announced on today's keynote, would be running on a specially design chip called the Tensor Processing Unit. With theTPU and TensorFlow optimized to work together, Google is effectively transforming its cloud based computing platform into the Android for the AI. Now all that is required is the necessary hardware which is used by most advanced AI research units. And if Google manages to put on the hardware, it wouldn't be much far away from an AI breakthrough.