“The Biggest Android Update Ever”
A2
All right,
so Google themselves hyped up this week's pre-I/O Android Show as
the biggest updates to Android... ever,
which
is a really high bar to set.
But they then went on to announce a bunch of stuff from Android 17...
to a new Android Auto
to Google Books, not to be confused with Google Books.
So I'm gonna show you what's good, what's new,
what's... meh, and
what's
a bit overhyped, I think.
So I'm gonna start with Android 17, just because every year,
you know,
updates to Android get smaller and smaller and more incremental.
So I was really curious to see what they were gonna get so hyped about this year.
It's not a visual redesign, but there are some added features
and then there's some Gemini stuff sprinkled on top.
And spoiler alert,
that's the stuff that they're so hyped about.
That's the stuff that makes them say it's the biggest Android update ever.
I have some thoughts.
We'll get to that.
But a couple neat things in Android,
the Gemini interface is redesigned to look a little different,
a little sparklier, but also
briefly very blurred around the edges before it sharpens up.
But it also says, "Concept UI.
Subject to change..." So I guess I shouldn't go too hard on this just yet.
Autofill will expand to be better by including information
that it can parse from
other Google services like Gmail, Wallet,
Photos, etc. So it can already...
put in your name and address and the classic stuff,
phone number when it fills out forms. But let's say you're filling out a
weird form that also is asking for your passport number for some reason.
Well,
if you have a photo of your passport in Google Photos,
it can actually pull that out and automatically paste it in there
without you having to go to Photos,
find the picture, and then go back and forth.
So that's nice.
And then there's also some new creator tools to be built directly into Android,
like more image processing compatibility,
so that it matches what we see coming from iPhones
and cutting you out and letting you talk over whatever's on your screen,
which is a super popular format that we've seen all over Instagram and TikTok.
So you can do that now... built into Android.
But then they also showed us this new smart enhance for photos and videos,
I believe... that can, in their own words,
reveal breathtaking detail...
and clarity that you didn't even know could be there.
And then they showed a before and after, going from this...
to this.
And
Jesus Christ, just no, no, no. This.
It looks worse!
I'm telling you, it looks worse.
I know it's brighter...
and people typically like a brighter image in a side-by-side.
And I know there's technically more detail...
in the shadows and probably in the highlights too,
but now... you're creating this like flat,
featureless image without a hint of contrast or shadows or anything.
It's just,
it looks worse.
This is exactly what I was talking about in literally my last video about
smartphone cameras and image processing.
I'll link it below the like button.
If you haven't already seen it, you can go watch it.
This is what I'm talking about.
But then there's this new feature.
There's this new digital wellbeing feature
called... Pause Point
and it's actually kind of interesting.
So you know the digital wellbeing stuff.
Obviously you've probably heard of screen time.
So if you've set a limit to how much you can use a certain app during a day,
you hit that limit, it kicks you out...
unless you bypass it.
But this is a bit of a different take on that.
This is basically when you go to open one of those apps,
it'll pause you for a second
and
ask you like, is this,
is this really what you want to do?
Is this how you want to spend your time right now?
It can even give you various prompts like
taking
a deep breath... or
showing some different apps that you can open instead.
Or literally swipe through some custom photos to remind you
to go touch some grass...
Along with showing how long you've already used this app today,
which is hilarious.
I don't know if this is gonna work any better than the other screen time tools,
but it's different.
It's a different take on it, so I'll give them credit for that.
It's interesting.
There's some other more expanded emojis and there's also
better speech-to-text called Rambler...
I don't know why they name it, but it's just better.
It removes a lot of filler words like ums and uhs and likes and neatly
stitches together everything you said into a single coherent thought,
which is nice.
We don't exactly know when all these features are actually coming out,
but they did do the thing that they've done many times in the
past at a Google presentation,
which is they say this will all be available first...
on Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones...
They've done this many times before, but it'll be later this summer.
So whenever they do come out,
they- Those will be the first devices to have it.
Definitely get subscribed to see the first hands-on and actual review video,
which I always do when there's a new version of Android
for when that comes out.
But then there's the AI stuff too, the Gemini stuff.
And I expect to see a lot more Gemini on stage next week at Google I/O.
But there's already some big stuff here, and they're calling a lot of it
Gemini Intelligence and branding it as... a new...
intelligence system,
which is really becoming a very Google thing to do,
which is giving it a new name, even though it's just
some new features and updates...
on top of what already exists.
But the idea is Gemini is going to be using what it knows
about you across the system
and across a bunch of other...
Google services
to be able to help you out.
And it's agentic,
so it can actually take actions for you and do things on your behalf
if you ask it to. Now,
I know agentic AI has been a pretty big focus of a lot of
these models and systems for the,
especially the past year or so.
And Google is making some pretty big promises about what it wants
these things to be able to do, but I'm really,
I'm not sure how I feel about some of these promises,
to be honest. Like,
one of the promo videos has this scene in it,
right?
So a guy just walks up to take a picture of a concert promo poster,
texts somebody about it, and then they agree they want to go.
So Gemini Intelligence pops up this button that says 'book two
floor seats to this concert'.
And you click it and then it just says... 'buying tickets'
and then 'tickets purchased'. And that-
That's it? You just- that's the whole thing?
That, I feel like, that can't be.
That can't be the whole thing, right??
But this, this isn't new.
Like, this has always been a challenge to these,
like, promo videos.
They're trying to make an ad with like the most relatable,
convenient thing that you want AI to do for you.
"Oh, help me plan my...
vacation to Italy,
give me an itinerary," and then I'll just follow it blindly.
But I just, I, I don't trust
AI
to get that all right.
And maybe it's just because I've seen previous generative AI things get
stuff wrong in the past or hallucinate insane things like we've talked about,
but I just, I don't think there's going to be a
one-click
'buy me these floor seats at a concert' button that I would trust to press
and it'll get everything right. Everything.
Everything right. It's going to get the right seats?
What if it gets the wrong
dates... or the wrong venue or the wrong...
What if the price is not what I expected? It's...
So I tweeted this just to make sure I'm not insane,
you know, asking if anyone else would trust this...
And
about 99 out of every hundred replies were just like,
"absolutely not. I would also not trust this button."
One of the replies though was Dieter Bohn from Google saying
there should actually be...
more steps in the checkout process.
They couldn't fit it all in the promo video and
I would really like to see these steps right,
because
maybe it still would let me like pick the date and,
and verify the exact
location and make sure everything's correct and...
set a price that I'm willing to pay,
in which case...
it let me do all the same stuff without having to go to the Ticketmaster website,
which... honestly, that's still a win.
But until I see that whole flow,
I am definitely in the skeptical category because as of right now,
this counts as like advertising a thing, a one-click thing that
doesn't actually exist.
But Gemini Intelligence will also let you make custom widgets,
which I thought was really convenient.
Like literally just a temporary widget for something...
like a trip you're about to be on or some event you've got coming up where,
again,
it sorts through everything it knows about that trip through the services
it's connected to like the weather...
and the flight information.
Basically you choose exactly what you want to show up and it makes a
widget for you and then when you're done you can just get rid of it.
And this...
specifically I think is one of the best strengths of Android.
Not just like this one example but this,
the ability to do a lot of customization and do a ton of detailed
personalization inside of something...
without knowing exactly how to do it.
Like we've had this ability in Google Home before where there's a ton of,
you know,
most people just do like the one-click light bulb,
very simple stuff.
But there's also tons of automations built in
and if you don't know how to use it, you might never touch it.
But if AI can let you with natural language just ask it to...
"hey, turn on the light and
the AC
when I get home and do these two or three other settings and change all this stuff"
and then it just builds the automation for you,
that's a huge win.
So this is another example of that. a custom widget...
for even someone like me, would take quite a bit of time.
"Okay, find the right app, find the right customization settings,
build exactly the way you want it to be..." But if you could just ask it to
build the widget for you and it does it. That's a win.
Now, Android Auto got a big update as well.
The biggest one is probably just the visual overhaul.
It looks a lot like a response to all those
Apple Maps versus Google Maps comparisons we've been seeing
for the last couple years now,
because it's now much more visually modern.
Plus it shows useful information too, like there's building silhouettes,
which can help.
There's overpasses and even specific lane guidance so you know which
lane you're supposed to be in for an upcoming direction.
And then there's also...
the app drawer, swipe over from the left side...
or the widgets that live over to the right side,
which again, are fully customizable.
So we love to see that.
Plus all the Gemini Intelligence features like making your own widget or Magic Cue,
if it works, should still be here.
So that's useful.
And then maybe the most interesting feature,
at least to me,
was the ability to not only adapt to whatever screen is in your car,
but then...
you can play full-screen YouTube videos in HD...
on the screen of the car while you're parked.
While you're parked,
which sounds insane, but, you know, if you're an electric car,
you know,
you might sit there and charge for like 30,
40 minutes,
so that seems like a reasonable thing to want to do.
But then when you go to drive away,
the video smoothly slides over to disappear,
not be distracting anymore.
But it becomes automatically a background audio podcast,
which is nice. but I just don't know
how the phone knows
that you shifted into drive
because the video,
it kind of implied that you shift into drive and then the video goes away.
And maybe it can use your GPS data to understand that you're moving
and it'll eventually go away, but it's just...
I'm not sure how seamless that will be. We'll see.
Also, if you don't have YouTube Premium,
does it still do background play or do you need YouTube Premium for that feature?
Oh,
and they're also expanding AirDrop support from Android to iPhone
with a bunch of new devices...
you love to see it.
Can't wait to AirDrop a photo from my OnePlus 15
to my MacBook Pro.
It's gonna be great.
But then, last but not least,
they showed us the beginning of a totally new product category
called Google Books.
And it's just Chromebooks but... with an update,
so they had to rename it. See,
a lot of the demos they showed for these Google Books...
looks a lot like the ChromeOS we already know and love.
It's got the browser, the tabs, but we also can run Android apps.
And of course it can still do all of the Gemini Intelligence
stuff that we just saw,
like custom widgets.
So that's all very convenient...
The big new feature really is the AI-enabled cursor.
So you wiggle that cursor and it lets you turn it into
essentially a multimodal portal for all things Gemini.
It's really neat.
So you can click on an image to learn more about it,
or even click on multiple images,
drag them together and then combine them with Nano Banana,
and it will visualize...
those images all combined together.
It just kind of lets you click around and do whatever you want in Gemini Land,
click on some text to draft a reply to it or learn more about that text.
It's a genuinely very smart idea.
Since the cursor is like the one universal thing everybody understands.
Making that magical and super convenient, I think levels this thing up.
Now, the way they described it,
Google Book is not just like a single laptop made by
Google like you would think.
It is more of a new generation of Chromebooks made by a couple
different manufacturers.
They said HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer,
and ASUS.
And the way you'll know it's a Google Book and not just any Chromebook...
Premium craftsmanship.
And the glow bar.
on the back, there's this really sick... RGB glowing bar.
I don't think they said the lights actually...
do anything else. Like they said they'd be functional,
but they didn't say what any of those functions would be...
like. I think a battery indicator would be cool,
like turn green when it's done or give me notification light.
But they didn't say any of that. It
mostly just... looks cool.
Hopefully these things don't end up being much more than $1,000.
Otherwise it might be an...
unfortunate throwback to the Chromebook Pixel days.
So you might have noticed my CR-48 back here.
Really like that thing. Anyway,
let me know what you guys think of all these new AI features built into
Google and Android.
Honestly, I'm very excited to test it.
I think mostly my take is the smaller stuff seems the most convenient.
Like the new autofill stuff is going to be really nice...
Also the new Android Auto seems like it's going to be really nice,
but we'll have to get our hands on all of it and test it and the
agentic stuff and all of that.
So let me know in the comments section what you want to see...
Thanks for watching. Catch you guys next one.
Peace.
