Round-up: Top Announcements at Google I/O 2016

By Sharun Mittal on May 23, 2016 03:12 PM

Google I/O is over but we are still in a hangover with all the announcements that took place. The company showed off a lot on innovation and some products as well, here's our list of the top announcements at Google I/O 2016.

Key Announcements At Google I/O 2016

Google Assistant

Google Assistant is the next evolution of the company's efforts with Machine Learning. Assistant is a conversational voice based personal assistant which not only answers your queries but tries to understand their context as well. You can read more here.

Google Home

Google acknowledged Amazon work on Echo and announced Google Home, a small wireless speaker with Assistant built in. Its the central hub of your home and can control all smart appliances, speakers, tell you about the weather, set alarms, manage to-do lists, control Nest devices and a lot more. Google also says that in future the Google Home will be able to do tasks outside the home as well, like opening garage doors, ordering flowers, etc.

Allo

Allo is a new messaging app with the power of Google Search built into it. Google has put a lot of useful features in the app including:

Quick Reply which tries to give suggestions based on your conversation and can also interpret an image to give a relevant reply.
Google Search is integrated so that you don’t have to jump between apps
There is a photo editor built-in so that you can scribble on photos.
Whisper Shout which lets you adjust the text size in conversation.
You also have an incognito mode where the chats are End-to-End encrypted and get deleted as soon as the window is closed.

This is Google's reply to WhatsApp and does require your phone number to setup an account.

Duo

Duo is a another messaging app which Google announced at I/O but its for video calls. With Duo, you get “Knock Knock” which lets you preview what's going on at the caller’s end before picking up the call, so that you can choose to accept or ignore the call. Both Allo and Duo will be released on Android and iOS later this summer.

Daydream & VR

Google announced its Daydream VR Platform to deliver a low-latency experience on your smartphone. It is a combination of hardware and software to make Virtual Reality more accessible.

The company also said that all Android smartphones won’t be compatible with Daydream, the smartphones need to have some specific sensors, a powerful SoC and Android N to start with. Google has already started laying the groundwork for DayDream in Android N and is working on VR variants of its Play Store, YouTube, Street View, Google Play Movies and other apps.

Android Instant Apps

With Instant Apps you would be able to run Android Apps without downloading them. Google says that it will take developers less than a day’s work to make their app compatible with Google Android Instant Apps, it’s a great initiative taken by Google to:

Save storage space on our mobiles
Save us from unnecessary notifications from the apps
Keeping only useful apps in mobile

Instant Apps are still a while away and the company is working with select developers to iron out the kinks.

Android N

Android N developer preview was out in March and now Google has officially showcased some of the interesting features in the new version.

Split Screen Multitasking: Finally, the feature makes it to stock Android, you can just long press the recent tasks button and the screen will split into 2 halves which can be arranged accordingly.
New set of emoji
Vulkan API for better Gaming

Google has still not named the new version, or at least not disclosed the name, they have asked everyone to suggest a name and they will select the one they like.

Android Wear 2.0

Android wear was officially released back in 2014, now in 2016 Google is giving it a major update, with Android Wear 2.0 and there are some major changes to the UI. The most important one being users can now add data from other apps to show up on any watch face. Android Wear 2.0 will help your smartwatch become more autonomous. Google also said that smartwatches would now be able to work more independently from your phone.

These were some of the major announcements that Google made at this year’s I/O, although there were a lot of other things that went on, these were the ones that are ready for prime time.