Here's a FIRST look at Chrome OS running on an Android phone! I managed to get a special build of Chromium OS - code-named "ferrochrome" - up and running on my Pixel 7 Pro, complete with networking, mouse, and keyboard support.
You can watch my hands-on video demo in this article I wrote for Android Authority.
You can watch my hands-on video demo in this article I wrote for Android Authority.
Android Authority
Exclusive first look: Here's Chrome OS running on an Android phone
We got Google’s Chrome OS up and running alongside Android on a Pixel phone, thanks to a special project called "ferrochrome."
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By the way, you can catch my live coverage of Google I/O over on Twitter. I'll be making some posts on this channel soon, though!
X (formerly Twitter)
Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) on X
It's time for #GoogleIO 2024! Here's my thread covering everything Google is announcing 🧵
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Gemini Nano with Multimodality just got announced! This new, 3.8B parameter is designed to run on-device and can process not just text input but also audio and images. It’s coming later this year “starting with Pixel” and will be used for:
- Clearer denoscriptions with TalkBack. TalkBack will soon be able to automatically generate more useful image denoscriptions. This will help people with visual impairments who can’t see images, especially when those images don’t have alt text already.
- Scam detection. A new feature that processes voice calls to detect and warn you when the person on the other end is trying to scam you. The feature will look for conversation patterns commonly associated with scams, like when a “bank representative” asks you to urgently transfer funds. If so, your phone will buzz and show a warning. This feature will be opt-in and audio is processed on-device by Gemini Nano with Multimodality, meaning your voice calls don’t leave the device.
- Clearer denoscriptions with TalkBack. TalkBack will soon be able to automatically generate more useful image denoscriptions. This will help people with visual impairments who can’t see images, especially when those images don’t have alt text already.
- Scam detection. A new feature that processes voice calls to detect and warn you when the person on the other end is trying to scam you. The feature will look for conversation patterns commonly associated with scams, like when a “bank representative” asks you to urgently transfer funds. If so, your phone will buzz and show a warning. This feature will be opt-in and audio is processed on-device by Gemini Nano with Multimodality, meaning your voice calls don’t leave the device.
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Gemini for Android is getting upgraded with new contextual capabilities!
- A new “ask this video” chip will appear if you invoke Gemini while a YouTube video is open. Gemini will then use the YouTube video as context.
- A new “ask this PDF” chip will appear when you’re viewing a PDF file in supported apps. Tapping this will let you ask questions about/summarize the document. This requires Gemini Advanced, though, because of its longer context window.
- You’ll be able to drag and drop generated images directly into Gmail, Messages, and other supported apps.
- Finally, devices with the next-gen multimodal Gemini Nano will surface dynamic suggestions. The way this works is that a screenshot of the screen is fed to Gemini Nano, which can then generate chips of potential things you might want to ask about.
- A new “ask this video” chip will appear if you invoke Gemini while a YouTube video is open. Gemini will then use the YouTube video as context.
- A new “ask this PDF” chip will appear when you’re viewing a PDF file in supported apps. Tapping this will let you ask questions about/summarize the document. This requires Gemini Advanced, though, because of its longer context window.
- You’ll be able to drag and drop generated images directly into Gmail, Messages, and other supported apps.
- Finally, devices with the next-gen multimodal Gemini Nano will surface dynamic suggestions. The way this works is that a screenshot of the screen is fed to Gemini Nano, which can then generate chips of potential things you might want to ask about.
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Circle to Search can now help students do their homework! If you select a math or physics word problem using Circle to Search, Google will now generate step-by-step instructions on how to solve the problem, without leaving the page you’re on.
Later this year, Circle to Search will be able to solve more complex math problems that involve symbolic formulas, diagrams, graphs, and more thanks to LearnLM, Google’s new family of language models fine-tuned for learning.
Later this year, Circle to Search will be able to solve more complex math problems that involve symbolic formulas, diagrams, graphs, and more thanks to LearnLM, Google’s new family of language models fine-tuned for learning.
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Gemini in Android Studio is getting some new features with Android Studio Koala!
- You can now provide custom prompts to generate a code suggestion that either adds new code or transforms selected code. You can ask Gemini to simplify complex code by rewriting it, perform specific code transformations like “make this code idiomatic”, or generate new functions you describe. Android Studio will show you Gemini’s code suggestion as a code diff you can review.
- It can now analyze your crash reports, generate insights that are shown in the Gemini tool window, provide a crash summary, and sometimes recommend next steps like sample code and links to relevant documentation.
- Later this year, the underlying Gemini model will be upgraded to Gemini 1.5 Pro, which offers a much larger context window and multimodal input.
- You can now provide custom prompts to generate a code suggestion that either adds new code or transforms selected code. You can ask Gemini to simplify complex code by rewriting it, perform specific code transformations like “make this code idiomatic”, or generate new functions you describe. Android Studio will show you Gemini’s code suggestion as a code diff you can review.
- It can now analyze your crash reports, generate insights that are shown in the Gemini tool window, provide a crash summary, and sometimes recommend next steps like sample code and links to relevant documentation.
- Later this year, the underlying Gemini model will be upgraded to Gemini 1.5 Pro, which offers a much larger context window and multimodal input.
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Gemini Nano is being baked into Google Chrome on PCs! This will power a new “help me write” feature that helps users write short form content. When users click on “help me write”, Chrome will download and quickly load the optimized Gemini Nano model in the background. This will work on the “vast majority of devices that are out there.”
Furthermore, web devs will get access to Gemini in Chrome. They won’t have to worry about prompt engineering, as Gemini Nano can be called by one of several high-level APIs, including translate, caption, and transcribe.
Google says they’ve “started to engage” with other browsers on enabling Gemini and will be opening up an early preview program soon.
Furthermore, web devs will get access to Gemini in Chrome. They won’t have to worry about prompt engineering, as Gemini Nano can be called by one of several high-level APIs, including translate, caption, and transcribe.
Google says they’ve “started to engage” with other browsers on enabling Gemini and will be opening up an early preview program soon.
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Google Play has announced a bunch of new features and tools for app developers! Here’s a summary:
- The ability to tailor store listings by search keywords. If you don’t know what keywords to optimize for, Google Play will give suggested keywords.
- Developers can now leverage Play Points to launch coupons, discounts, or exclusive in-game items.
- Deep links patching makes it easier to experiment or make quick changes to your deep links setup without needing to release a new app version.
- A new surface (in developer preview) in Google Play for devs to showcase app content and enable cross-app continuation journeys. Devs can highlight the most important content from their apps and even launch users into a full-screen, immersive experience with personalized recommendations and promotions. This requires integrating the Engage SDK.
- The SDK Console is now available to all SDK providers that are distributed from a canonical Maven repository source. Devs can also now share crash or ANR data with SDK owners.
- Google’s new pre-review checks aggregate existing quality checks into one UI so it’s easier for devs to spot common policy and compatibility issues before their app goes live. You can also now discard unwanted releases in the “not yet sent for review” stage.
- Play Integrity API can now return a Play Protect verdict, letting apps know if Play Protect is turned on and if it’s found any known malware. Through recent device activity, Play Integrity lets apps know if it detects a high volume of requests that could signal an attack. Further, a new app access risk signal (in public beta) lets devs know when a non-accessibility app is capturing the screen or controlling the device.
- Listings for an app will now show screenshots, ratings, and reviews specific to each device type. Users can also search and filter through ratings and reviews by device type.
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- The ability to tailor store listings by search keywords. If you don’t know what keywords to optimize for, Google Play will give suggested keywords.
- Developers can now leverage Play Points to launch coupons, discounts, or exclusive in-game items.
- Deep links patching makes it easier to experiment or make quick changes to your deep links setup without needing to release a new app version.
- A new surface (in developer preview) in Google Play for devs to showcase app content and enable cross-app continuation journeys. Devs can highlight the most important content from their apps and even launch users into a full-screen, immersive experience with personalized recommendations and promotions. This requires integrating the Engage SDK.
- The SDK Console is now available to all SDK providers that are distributed from a canonical Maven repository source. Devs can also now share crash or ANR data with SDK owners.
- Google’s new pre-review checks aggregate existing quality checks into one UI so it’s easier for devs to spot common policy and compatibility issues before their app goes live. You can also now discard unwanted releases in the “not yet sent for review” stage.
- Play Integrity API can now return a Play Protect verdict, letting apps know if Play Protect is turned on and if it’s found any known malware. Through recent device activity, Play Integrity lets apps know if it detects a high volume of requests that could signal an attack. Further, a new app access risk signal (in public beta) lets devs know when a non-accessibility app is capturing the screen or controlling the device.
- Listings for an app will now show screenshots, ratings, and reviews specific to each device type. Users can also search and filter through ratings and reviews by device type.
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Mishaal's Android News Feed
Google Play has announced a bunch of new features and tools for app developers! Here’s a summary: - The ability to tailor store listings by search keywords. If you don’t know what keywords to optimize for, Google Play will give suggested keywords. - Developers…
- Billing changes: customers with a Google family setup can approve their child’s purchases from anywhere; in India, customers can ask someone else to buy an app or in-app product for them by sharing a payment link; Google Play now updates price ranges to reflect currency fluctuations; items can be priced as high as $999.99 now; new badges reflect trending items; finally, customers in Brazil, France, Italy, and Spain can now pay over time for long-term subnoscriptions.
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Here's a quick demo of the new, more context-aware Gemini app for Android.
The new app supports drag-and-drop of images, can show take a YouTube video as context if you tap "Ask this video", and can take a PDF as context if you tap "Ask this PDF".
The new app supports drag-and-drop of images, can show take a YouTube video as context if you tap "Ask this video", and can take a PDF as context if you tap "Ask this PDF".
YouTube
Demo of the new Gemini app for Android
A demo of the updated Gemini app for Android announced at Google I/O 2024.
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Android 15 Beta 2 is HERE! Beta 2 brings loads of new changes and features. Here’s a summary:
- Private space is here! This feature, as I previously reported, lets users make a separate space where they can keep sensitive apps away from prying eyes. It makes a separate user profile that’s paused when the device is locked. Private space apps show up in a dedicated container in the launcher and are hidden from recents, notifications, settings, etc. when the profile is locked.
- App pairs are here! As I previously reported, Android 15 now lets you save a pair of apps to launch in split-screen mode.
- Predictive back is enabled by default! You no longer need to enable a developer option to see the system animations for back-to-home, cross-task, and cross-activity in apps that have properly migrated.
- Apps can now highlight only the most recently selected photos and videos when partial access to media permissions is granted.
- Apps targeting Android 15 can provide Remote Views to the Widget Picker so they can update the preview to be more personal/relevant.
- Health Connect adds 2 new data types: skin temperature and training plans.
- If your system language is set to French, you can now change how the OS addresses you (grammatical gender) by going to language settings.
- Android 15 Beta 2 lets apps set rich vibrations for incoming notifications by channel. This lets users distinguish between notifications by haptics.
- The animation for entering PiP mode in Android 15 is now smoother. This will benefit apps having UI elements overlaid on top of their main UI that enters PiP. Apps can now receive a callback when the PiP enter animation starts so they can quickly toggle irrelevant UI elements.
- Android 15 blocks apps that don’t match the top UID on the stack from launching activities. This is to prevent malicious apps within the same task from launching another app’s activity then overlaying themselves on top.
- New APIs to perform permission checks on content URIs.
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- Private space is here! This feature, as I previously reported, lets users make a separate space where they can keep sensitive apps away from prying eyes. It makes a separate user profile that’s paused when the device is locked. Private space apps show up in a dedicated container in the launcher and are hidden from recents, notifications, settings, etc. when the profile is locked.
- App pairs are here! As I previously reported, Android 15 now lets you save a pair of apps to launch in split-screen mode.
- Predictive back is enabled by default! You no longer need to enable a developer option to see the system animations for back-to-home, cross-task, and cross-activity in apps that have properly migrated.
- Apps can now highlight only the most recently selected photos and videos when partial access to media permissions is granted.
- Apps targeting Android 15 can provide Remote Views to the Widget Picker so they can update the preview to be more personal/relevant.
- Health Connect adds 2 new data types: skin temperature and training plans.
- If your system language is set to French, you can now change how the OS addresses you (grammatical gender) by going to language settings.
- Android 15 Beta 2 lets apps set rich vibrations for incoming notifications by channel. This lets users distinguish between notifications by haptics.
- The animation for entering PiP mode in Android 15 is now smoother. This will benefit apps having UI elements overlaid on top of their main UI that enters PiP. Apps can now receive a callback when the PiP enter animation starts so they can quickly toggle irrelevant UI elements.
- Android 15 blocks apps that don’t match the top UID on the stack from launching activities. This is to prevent malicious apps within the same task from launching another app’s activity then overlaying themselves on top.
- New APIs to perform permission checks on content URIs.
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Mishaal's Android News Feed
Android 15 Beta 2 is HERE! Beta 2 brings loads of new changes and features. Here’s a summary: - Private space is here! This feature, as I previously reported, lets users make a separate space where they can keep sensitive apps away from prying eyes. It makes…
- Android 15 will block users from installing apps with a target SDK version ≤ 23. Previously, Android 14 blocked apps with target SDK version ≤ 22.
- As I previously reported, Android 15 is adding support for 16 KB page sizes. Google says devices with larger page sizes can see improved performance in memory-intensive workloads. Apps with NDK libraries will likely need to be rebuilt to work on these devices.
- Android 15 includes ANGLE as an optional layer for running OpenGL ES on top of Vulkan. The move to ANGLE will standardize the Android OpenGL implementation. Going forward, ANGLE will be shipped as the default GL system driver on more new devices with the goal for GL/ES to be only available through ANGLE.
- On devices that don’t have a HW AV1 decoder, VideoLAN’s SW AV1 decoder (dav1d) can be utilized. As I previously reported, dav1d is a highly efficient and performant AV1 decoder. It’s included by default in Android 15 but is available on Android 11+ devices through a Play System Update. However, apps have to opt in by invoking dav1d by name for now.
- Improvements to the security of intents. Intents that target specific components must match the target’s intent-filter specifications. Intents without an action will no longer match any intent-filters.
- Foreground services that rely on the SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW permission exemption for background starts are now required to have a visible overlay when targeting Android 15.
- The dataSync and mediaProcessing foreground service types now have a ~6 hour timeout after which the service is no longer considered a foreground service. If the service doesn’t stop itself, it’ll get stopped with a failure.
- Lastly, some text changes. Beta 2 includes API-related updates from ICU 74. The font file for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean is now a variable font. There’s now a font file for the Japanese Hentaigana font. TextView now allocates additional width for cursive fonts or language characters with complex shaping that may otherwise get clipped.
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- As I previously reported, Android 15 is adding support for 16 KB page sizes. Google says devices with larger page sizes can see improved performance in memory-intensive workloads. Apps with NDK libraries will likely need to be rebuilt to work on these devices.
- Android 15 includes ANGLE as an optional layer for running OpenGL ES on top of Vulkan. The move to ANGLE will standardize the Android OpenGL implementation. Going forward, ANGLE will be shipped as the default GL system driver on more new devices with the goal for GL/ES to be only available through ANGLE.
- On devices that don’t have a HW AV1 decoder, VideoLAN’s SW AV1 decoder (dav1d) can be utilized. As I previously reported, dav1d is a highly efficient and performant AV1 decoder. It’s included by default in Android 15 but is available on Android 11+ devices through a Play System Update. However, apps have to opt in by invoking dav1d by name for now.
- Improvements to the security of intents. Intents that target specific components must match the target’s intent-filter specifications. Intents without an action will no longer match any intent-filters.
- Foreground services that rely on the SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW permission exemption for background starts are now required to have a visible overlay when targeting Android 15.
- The dataSync and mediaProcessing foreground service types now have a ~6 hour timeout after which the service is no longer considered a foreground service. If the service doesn’t stop itself, it’ll get stopped with a failure.
- Lastly, some text changes. Beta 2 includes API-related updates from ICU 74. The font file for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean is now a variable font. There’s now a font file for the Japanese Hentaigana font. TextView now allocates additional width for cursive fonts or language characters with complex shaping that may otherwise get clipped.
(2/2)
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