What to Expect After Google I/O 2018

Google made big announcements at Google I/O 2018 about new technologies and improvements on what is already established – check Exaud’s Top5 favorite news.

We all know that technology, in general, is constantly evolving at an impressive speed and, what we think that is not possible today, may well be a reality in a not so distant future. Events like Google I/O showcase what is already at our door and it is about this near future that I am going to talk about next.

I have a special interest in every news about mobile, especially Android and more recently, Artificial Intelligence. This year, Google I/O brought new stuff in both categories and here are my thoughts on what I think it’s going to happen next:

Google Duplex

Google Assistant is becoming more and more capable and it is in my opinion the best assistant on the market right now. It helps users accomplishing simple day-to-day tasks which allow them to enjoy life a little bit more and stop worrying about boring routines.

Google Duplex, one of the biggest announcements of this year’s Conference comes with the intention of doing even more for the Assistant’s users: it can, for example, interact and maintain a simple conversation to schedule a haircut appointment.

If something like that is released, and I believe it will be in a near future (I know that it will probably have some limitations), it will open a lot of possibilities and, what we have only seen in the sci-fi movies will become real: assistants talking with users and controlling everything around, based on the user’s habits and commands.

This kind of software allied with good hardware, which is also improving at a great pace, will lead to an increase of the number of houses, cars and offices using smart assistants to control all connected appliances.

It was also shown the Google Assistant on Wear OS and, I think it’s a great addition, because, generally, the watch is easier to reach than the phone. As a bonus, the users will be able to choose the voice for the Assistant. Right now, there were announced 6 different voices, one of those being John Legend’s voice. For the fans, having a musician star “talking to you” can be a fantastic experience.

Android P

The next version of the Android OS looks really interesting, bringing improvements in many different areas.

Android OS will also be more aware of the user habits and will have an adaptive battery usage which means, for example, that the system will try to predict when the user uses the apps, avoiding CPU usage for apps that are not active. This is really important because as the phones become more and more capable, the battery also needs to keep the pace with this evolution.

There are also UI changes and new gestures that makes Android more intuitive. The media volume control on the side which will end with the annoying thing of reducing/increasing the ring volume instead of the media volume (I agree with Google that most of the time people only want to switch the ring on and off instead of the volume) and, also the manual control for the rotation.

Nowadays, many people spend a lot of time looking at the phone doing a great variety of different things and there’s no doubt that sometimes we should be more aware of what’s happening around us. To avoid these situations, Android P will help you to get on track on how much time you spend using the apps, imposing limits on app usages and a new Sush feature that sets the phone to “Do Not Disturb” when the phone is turned on its screen.

This time, the public beta version of Android P was announced for non Google phones which shows that Google is really trying to work with phone manufacturers to speed up and increase the Android updates.

Android on Cars

As a car enthusiast and a fan of Volvo brand, I really enjoyed seeing the Volvo XC40 running a complete Android system based on Android P in its Infotainment system. I also like Android Auto but I truly think that this approach gives the user a lot more capabilities. I hope that this system makes part of the production of cars in the near future because I would certainly consider buying a car with it, if available.

There was a lot more stuff announced and discussed on Google I/O 2018 but these were the ones that interested me the most. I’m really anxious to try all of this new techs as soon as I possible. I really enjoy living in a connected world and all of this just adds more to that.

Image source: https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/features/story/google-says-it-announced-100-things-at-i-o-2018-here-are-10-that-really-matter-1231480-2018-05-11