Kategorie: Android

When you’re on the road, the journey can be just as important as the destination. Today we’ve added new Android Auto features that make your drives even more simple, personal and helpful—including easier access to your favorite content with improved media browse and search features, plus new ways to stay connected with visual message previews and group messaging.

You can try out these new features with some of your favorite media apps—like Google Play Books, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts and Spotify. Popular messaging apps like Messages, Hangouts and WhatsApp also work with the new messaging features. In the coming months, we’ll work with more apps to add support for these new features.

New ways to discover media

If driving in silence isn’t for you, playing and finding media just got easier. By bringing content to the forefront of your screen, you can now spend less time browsing and more time enjoying the content you like most. An improved layout, featuring large album art views, lets you quickly identify and select something to play.

Got something specific in mind? We’ve also made improvements to the voice search experience. Just say “OK Google, play 80s music” or “OK Google, play Lilt” to view even more categorized search results from your app right on the screen.

More options for messaging

As you’re driving, you don’t have to worry about missing important messages—you can now safely stay connected with multiple people at once. When messages arrive, Android Auto can show you a short preview of the text when your vehicle is stopped. This message previewing capability is purely optional (enabled via Android Auto’s settings menu), giving you the ability to choose what’s most important—privacy or convenience.

In addition to SMS messaging, Android Auto now supports apps that use MMS (multimedia messaging service) and RCS (rich communication services). This means that your favorite messaging apps can now offer additional capabilities, like support for group messaging.

The updates will be fully available in the next several days. Check out the Android Auto app in the Google Play Store to try out these new features on your next drive.

When we launched Android One in India back in 2014, the goal was to get the next billion people online by providing them with high quality, affordable phones. Since then, the larger community has told us they value what Android One stands for across a range of phones—a refreshingly simple software experience that is accessible, always fresh and stays ahead of the curve, with improvements to battery life, usability, and of course, security.  

As phone manufacturers continue to innovate by delivering high quality devices at accessible price points, keeping the inside of one’s phone innovative, fresh and secure is critical to a great experience. We’re extending our commitment to Android One by working with more partners to build phones that run a software experience designed by Google.

In the past year, we’ve expanded the program to new partners, geographies and price points. For example, in Japan, Android One devices are among the top selling phones in Softbank-owned Y!Mobile stores. General Mobile has committed a full portfolio of Android One devices in Turkey, and recently released their fourth offering, the GM 6. 

Today, our newest program partner Xiaomi just launched Mi A1. This phone is a great example of what Android One represents: a collaboration between Google and our partners to deliver a software experience designed by Google. For example, users can capture moments in stunning detail on Xiaomi’s dual camera with 2X optical zoom. They can then seamlessly save unlimited photos at high quality with Google Photos. Mi A1 will be available in dozens of markets, including India, Indonesia, Russia, Vietnam and Taiwan.

All Android One phones are powered by a Google designed software experience that is:

• Simple: All Android One phones consistently run a pure Android experience with a clean design and a small, carefully curated set of preinstalled apps.

• Smart: The latest technology from Google is built right into Android One phones and core to the experience. For example, all devices will be optimized for the Google Assistant for a personalized experience. Google Photos will also be the default gallery for Android One phones to help users avoid running out of space, by providing free and unlimited storage of high quality photos and videos.

• Secure: With multiple layers of protection, Android One phones are kept safe and secure with regular security updates. Devices will also stay secure with Google Play Protect: built-in malware protection that keeps phones clean, fast and high-performing. 
• Fresh: Android One devices will receive timely upgrades to the latest Android OS, so people can quickly gain access to the latest platform innovations on their device. Users of the new Mi A1 will receive an upgrade to Android Oreo before the end of the year and next year they will also be one of the first to receive an upgrade to Android P. 

Android One phones are Google endorsed devices that run a simple, fresh, and secure experience. We look forward to bringing more Android One partner phones to more consumers around the world. Check out android.com/one to learn more.

Ten years ago, we introduced the first version of the Android operating system with the T-Mobile G1, and launched Android Market (now Google Play) the very same day. Android has grown up a lot since then—there are now more than 2 billion active Android devices around the world.

The operating system itself has gone through some major transformations, too. The G1 ran on Android 1.0—a version so early, we didn’t even name it after a dessert. The debut included features that you know and love today like pull-down notifications, sharing content across apps and multitasking between apps. But it didn’t have more advanced features like voice search, turn-by-turn navigation or NFC. 10 years later, we’ve come a long way! Our latest release of the operating system, Android 9 Pie, has all of those features and harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to make your phone smarter, simpler and more adaptive.

On the occasion of Android’s 10th birthday, we’re taking a trip down memory lane to look at the earliest versions of Android, the major improvements of each release and how far we’ve come:

Cupcake (Android 1.5) added virtual keyboards, customization options and easy ways to share.

With the introduction of virtual keyboards, Cupcake opened the doors to full touchscreen Android devices. And with home screen app widgets, you had more ways to customize your device, a defining feature still used today, alongside app folders. Sharing directly from your smartphone became easier with more ways to copy and paste and the ability to capture, share and upload videos.

Donut (Android 1.6) gave you one easy place to search across your phone and the web.

Donut introduced Android’s Quick Search Box, which lets you get search results from both the web and across your phone, from a single box on the homescreen. Even in these early days, the system was designed to learn which search results were more relevant, getting you to the right results faster the next time you typed in a relevant query. We also introduced support for different screen densities and sizes, laying the foundation for the very high density screens and variety of phone sizes we see today.

Eclair (Android 2.0+) changed driving forever with Google Maps navigation and speech-to-text.

Google Maps navigation made Android smartphones, well, smart. Turn-by-turn directions using Google Maps data included many features found in a typical in-car navigation system: a forward-looking 3D view, voice guidance and traffic information—all for free on your high resolution phone. Eclair also added speech-to-text transcription, which lets you input text like emails and messages with your voice.

We also introduced a fan favorite feature: live wallpapers.

Voice Actions in Froyo (Android 2.2+) helped you do even more hands-free.

Froyo took Android voice capabilities to the next level with Voice Actions, which let you perform key functions on your phone—searching, getting directions, making notes, setting alarms and more—with just the sound of your voice. Sounds familiar…

Gingerbread (Android 2.3) added early battery management capabilities.

Gingerbread helped you get the most out of your battery life by knowing exactly how your device was using it, from screen brightness to any active app. With Android 9, we’ve taken battery life management to a whole new level with Adaptive Battery, which uses AI to learn the apps you use most and prioritize battery for them.

Honeycomb (Android 3.0) extended Android to more shapes and sizes.

Honeycomb’s new Holo design language, along with larger layout and rich animation support, made the most of your tablet’s screen. This was the first version of Android that was intended for different form factors, laying the groundwork for more robust and flexible platforms introduced later, like Android TV, Android Auto, Android Things and Wear OS by Google.

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) introduced smooth moves

Ice Cream Sandwich introduced a simplified and streamlined design to help you get things done on your phone faster. New features like app folders, a favorites tray and widgets made it easier to find and use your favorite apps. The addition of NFC didn’t just pave the way for mobile payments—it also made “beaming” of maps, videos, links and contacts easy by placing two phones together.

Navigation became more intuitive with the arrival of quick settings and the ability to swipe to dismiss recent apps and notifications, features first introduced in tablets with Honeycomb, brought to phones. This release reflected a renewed focus on creating fluid experiences in Android—an effort that continues to this day with intuitive gestures in Android 9.

Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) brought personalized and intelligent assistance to the palm of your hand

A precursor to the Google Assistant, Google Now in Jelly Bean helped you get the information you needed at just the right time—like the daily weather as you got dressed and commute times before you walked out the door. Notifications became richer, allowing you to expand them to show more content and immediately take actions, such as liking a post, archiving an email or even blocking future notifications.

Ok Google, tell me about KitKat (Android 4.4)

KitKat built on the earlier Voice actions, uniting the helpfulness of Google Now with improvements in voice technology and letting you launch voice search, send a text, get directions, or play a song just by saying “Ok Google.” KitKat also brought lighter colors and transparency to Android’s design, setting the stage for Material Design in Lollipop.

Android 5.0’s Lollipop brought great design to Android

With Lollipop, we brought Material Design to Android, introducing an entirely new look and feel that made it easier to navigate your device. Material Design is a visual language that combines the classic principles of good design with the innovation of technology and science. Lollipop also made it more seamless to transition across the devices that you use throughout the day, so that you can pick up where you left off across Android phones, tablets, TV and wearables.

Help was on tap in Android 6.0 Marshmallow

Marshmallow represented another next step in the journey to the Google Assistant we know today. With Now on Tap, you could simply tap and hold the Home button to get contextual help—customized to your task at hand, without having to leave what you were doing, whether in an app or on a website.

To help save your juice for the things that matter most, Marshmallow brought some new battery saving features: Doze, which automatically puts your device into a sleep state when it’s at rest, and App Standby, which limits the impact of less frequently used apps on battery life.

We also introduced run-time permissions, which help users better understand and evaluate requests for apps to have access to certain data.

N was for Nougat (Android 7.0) and new emoji

Nougat focused on improvements to the ways you were already using your phone—adding multi-window to let you run two apps side by side, instant reply within notifications, adjustable display size for improved accessibility, and Data Saver which limits how much data your devices uses on background. We also introduced VR mode to enable high-quality VR experiences for apps, and 63 new emoji that focus on better gender representation—in all six skin tone options. 🙌

The world’s favorite cookie became the world’s favorite new Android release—Android 8.0 Oreo

Oreo introduced ways to navigate tasks on your phone more seamlessly, like picture-in-picture, and Autofill, which helps you log into your apps faster. Oreo also continued to simplify the Android experience with more visual cohesion and easier gestures—like swiping up from the homescreen to see all your apps.

And with Oreo (Go edition), we built our first-ever configuration of Android specifically optimized for entry-level devices, ensuring that first-time smartphone users get a fast, powerful experience.

Android 9 Pie serves a slice of Digital Wellbeing

The way we use our phones—and how much time we spend on them—has changed a lot since the days of Cupcake. So one of the biggest changes in Android 9 Pie is the introduction of new ways for you to take control of your digital wellbeing, including a new app timer and a dashboard that lets you see how much time you spend in various apps. With Android 9, your phone also changes the way it works by learning from you—and working better for you—the more you use it. Artificial intelligence now powers core capabilities of your phone, from predicting your next task so you can jump right into the action you want to take to prioritizing battery power for the apps you use most and the ones it thinks you are going to use soon.

From the early days of Voice Actions with speech-to-text to an increasingly helpful smartphone with AI at its core, Android has continued to evolve over the past 10 years. And thanks to our open-source platform and the passionate community of users, partners and developers, Android has empowered innovations and given people access to the power of mobile technology.

As researchers on the Android team, we spend a lot of time out in the world, listening to our users. To do our best work, we leave our passions behind. Objectivity is key. But it’s hard not to develop empathy, especially when you start to notice that not everything about people’s experience with technology is positive.

As early as 2015, we noticed that increasingly, people we talked to were raising a flag about how distracting notifications on mobile devices can be. So we started thinking a lot about the role of notifications on people’s phones, and how we could build a better experience to help people achieve balance. We started with some small changes in Android Nougat, like bundling notifications and making it easier to reply to a message without opening the app.

But we knew there was more that we could do to understand how phones might be making it harder for people to disconnect, and the frustration this was generating. So last year my colleague Safia Baig and I embarked on a research project to do that, and we’ve just published the results.

What we found

Working across different cultures, we conducted our research in the U.S. and Switzerland. We spoke at length with and shadowed for hours at a time 19 participants aged 18-65, using either Android or iOS smartphones. We also analyzed data we had previously collected from 112 participants in China, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, and the U.S. over a period of two years.  

Surprisingly, we found few differences across cultures, countries, gender, age groups or types of devices people were using. Across the board, mobile devices loaded with social media, email and news apps, were creating a constant sense of obligation, generating unintended personal stress.

Our research found two reasons why people’s relationships with their phones was evolving in this manner. First, there are a lot of engaging things to do with your phone, and it’s hard to break the habit. One person we interviewed said that the phone was far from liberating: “It’s like a prison. You can get lost in your phone and not get out. Social media, gaming, being available [to others] all day… you can’t get away.” Second, people feel that there is a social obligation to reply to messages very quickly, and to be available all the time: “My phone is like a little pet—it goes with me from room to room.  I don’t want to miss any messages.”

While people look forward to vacations, one of the few times they are able to disconnect, they also want to be able to choose when to detach: When they have an unplanned or forced disconnection (e.g., leaving their phone at home, running out of battery), they feel anxiety and extreme inconvenience. They lose productivity, they worry about others wondering why they’re not replying to messages, they worry about missing important information—they have a fear of missing out (“FOMO”).  

How we can help people find balance

Our research indicates three ways the mobile industry can help people toward a healthy relationship with their phones:

• Facilitate disconnection—by giving people information that helps them reflect upon their own usage and digital behaviors, and the tools to disconnect, like the Digital Wellbeing Dashboard in Android 9, and YouTube’s Time Watched profile

• Reduce temptation to re-engage, by adding an extra step like the App Timer in Android 9 Pie

• Allow for partial disconnection—for example, keeping the essential phone functionalities available, while restricting other applications

We’ve begun to make some of these changes across Google products with our Digital Wellbeing effort, which we announced at I/O this year. Digital Wellbeing is a core concept of Android 9 Pie, and we’ve recently introduced more controls across platforms like YouTube. We’re also working on building tools that allow parents to control the type of access their kids have to technology, through Family Link.

A sense of obligation has crept into tech. People want tools to break it. They want to be able to set aside their phone sometimes, not worry about missing anything absolutely urgent, and feel in control of their phone use. We have a responsibility to make that easier—to give people a way to reclaim their time and not feel tied to their devices. But we also believe that we should give people something more—not just more control or a better balanced relationship with technology, but the “joy of missing out,” or “JOMO.”

Technology should improve your life, instead of distracting from it. There’s a lot more work to be done, but the first step toward bringing JOMO into people’s lives is to start listening. This research represents some of our earliest efforts to do that, with much more to come.

Accurately locating someone during an emergency call is critical for reducing response time and can be the difference between life and death. More than 80 percent of emergency calls come from mobile phones, but locating these phones can be challenging as traditional emergency location technologies can fail indoors or have a radius that’s too big to be useful.

In 2016, we announced Emergency Location Service (ELS) in Android. ELS provides a faster, more accurate location to emergency communications centers when an Android user places an emergency call, helping save lives by shortening emergency response times. It provides a more accurate location both indoors and outdoors by using a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi, mobile networks and sensors—the same high-accuracy location you see when using Google Maps.

Over the last two years, we’ve been expanding ELS worldwide; it’s now available in 14 countries and provides location to emergency centers for more than 140,000 calls per day. Today we’re announcing the launch of ELS in the U.S. with RapidSOS, T-Mobile and West, to bring more accurate location more quickly to emergency centers.

How Emergency Location Services in Android works

ELS is supported on 99 percent of Android devices (version 4.0 and above). The ELS service activates where it is supported by your wireless provider or emergency infrastructure provider. We partner with wireless providers and public safety organizations to activate ELS in a country. You don’t need to install a separate app, update your OS, or have special hardware to benefit from more accurate location. The location is computed on the device and delivered directly to emergency providers—without passing through Google servers, and only when you explicitly call an emergency number.

Bringing more accurate emergency location to the U.S.

In partnership with emergency technology company RapidSOS, we provide ELS location directly to emergency communications centers through their secure, IP-based data platform. RapidSOS integrates with existing software at emergency centers in the U.S. to provide a faster, more accurate location with ELS. In testing the technology in the U.S., emergency centers have told us ELS has already helped save lives in their jurisdiction, decreasing the average uncertainty radius from 159 meters to 37 meters (from 522 feet to 121 feet). At the Collier County Sheriff’s office in Florida, a caller who had given an incorrect address was able to be found thanks to ELS. And in Loudon County, TN, ELS helped emergency responders get to a non-English speaking caller who was struggling to communicate her address.

ELS is also available for Android users on T-Mobile in the U.S. If you’re on T-Mobile’s network and make a call to 911, your Android phone can send your location to the emergency center to help first responders locate you quickly. Wireless providers like T-Mobile have existing ways to share emergency locations with emergency centers, but this integration with ELS will help deliver higher accuracy locations faster than before.

Finally, we’ve already launched ELS in the U.S. Virgin Islands through a partnership with West and a regional wireless provider, Viya. West is an emergency technology company that works directly with wireless providers. For Android users on Viya, our integration with West allows your more accurate location to be delivered more quickly with ELS to emergency centers through existing channels by wireless providers.

Helping users around the world

As we’ve launched ELS around the world, we’ve heard about the impact that our more accurate location has made in critical, emergency situations. In Austria, a mountain biker in a remote, heavily forested area suffered a serious accident and called emergency services for help. The legacy emergency location systems provided a location with a radius of more than 900 meters (about half a mile), while ELS was able to provide a location within 12 meters (39 feet) to help first responders locate the biker.

In New Zealand, Fire and Emergency received a call from someone who had seen a fire while he was driving along a rural highway. The caller didn’t know where he was on the highway. Using ELS, Fire and Emergency New Zealand was able to locate the caller and the fire, and dispatch a crew to put the fire out.

As we continue to expand ELS in Android in the U.S. and to additional regions and countries, we’re grateful for the opportunity to provide assistance when our users need it most. To learn more, check out our website at https://crisisresponse.google/els.

We believe everyone across the globe should have powerful, high-quality device experiences. That’s why we introduced Android (Go edition) last year, with the goal to provide a fast and smooth experience optimized for first-time and entry-level smartphone owners.

We welcomed our first wave of Android (Go edition) phones this April, and now there are more than 200 devices available in 120+ countries including India, South Africa, U.S., Nigeria and Brazil. We also continued to refine the core operating system and have added a variety of new useful features to apps like Google Go, YouTube Go, Files Go and more.

Whether it comes with a HD or regular VGA screen, 4GB or 8GB or 16GB of storage, or 3G or 4G support, there’s a Go edition device for everyone. In some countries, devices are available for as little as $30 USD. With more than 100 manufacturers planned to release devices before the end of the year, you can expect even more options when choosing your first Go edition device.

Android 9 Pie (Go edition)

With Android (Go edition), we aim to bring the latest Android improvements to more entry-level phone buyers. As part of the release of Android 9 Pie, we’re introducing a brand new Go edition experience. Pie (Go edition) includes:

• Up to an additional 500MB of storage available out of the box

• Faster device boot times

• Top-of-the-line security features like verified boot

• A accessible dashboard for tracking and monitoring data consumption

Collectively, these features help solve some of the most common pain points for entry-level device owners: storage, performance, data management and security. Keep an eye out for the first devices offering the new Pie (Go edition) experience to hit shelves later this fall.

Go with Google

A core part of the Go edition experience is the fully redesigned set of Google apps, which are specifically built to serve the needs of first-time smartphone owners. These apps include unique features, like free downloading in YouTube Go, that aren’t found in the classic app. Since February we’ve introduced a number of improvements to our suite of apps:

• Google Go now offers the ability to read webpages aloud and highlights each word so you can follow along.

• YouTube Go makes it easier to enjoy videos while using less data with new features like gallery mode for downloaded content.

• Maps Go now features navigation, making it possible for people with Go edition devices or unstable connections to use turn-by-turn directions whether you’re traveling by car, by bus, or on foot.

• Files Go, which has saved users ~90TB of space since launch, is now capable of transferring data peer-to-peer, without using mobile data, at speeds up to ~490Mbips.

• Assistant Go now supports additional languages including Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Indonesian, and has expanded support for device actions like controlling Bluetooth, camera and flashlight, and added reminders.

• Android Messages App for Android (Go edition) is now ~50 percent smaller in size and the Phone App includes caller ID and spam detection.

With a broader range of options and better performing phones, more people can come online for the first time and have access to essential, helpful information. We’re excited to keep the momentum going.

The latest release of Android is here! And it comes with a heaping helping of artificial intelligence baked in to make your phone smarter, simpler and more tailored to you. Today we’re officially introducing Android 9 Pie.

We’ve built Android 9 to learn from you—and work better for you—the more you use it. From predicting your next task so you can jump right into the action you want to take, to prioritizing battery power for the apps you use most, to helping you disconnect from your phone at the end of the day, Android 9 adapts to your life and the ways you like to use your phone.

Tailored to you

Android 9 aims to make your phone even smarter by learning from you and adapting to your usage patterns. That’s why Android 9 comes with features like Adaptive Battery, which learns the apps you use most and prioritizes battery for them, and Adaptive Brightness, which learns how you like to set the brightness in different settings, and does it for you.

Android 9 also helps you get things done faster with App Actions, which predicts what you’ll want to do next based on your context and displays that action right on your phone. Say it’s Tuesday morning and you’re preparing for your commute: you’ll be suggested actions like navigating to work on Google Maps or resuming an audiobook with Google Play Books. And when you put in headphones after work, you may see options to call your mom or start your favorite Spotify playlist.

Later this fall, we’ll also roll out Slices (pie…slices…get it?!) which shows relevant information from your favorite apps when you need it. If you start typing “Lyft” into Google Search, you’ll see a “slice” of the Lyft app, showing prices for your ride home and the ETA for a driver so you can take action more quickly and easily.

Now easy as pie

Making your phone smarter and more adaptive is important, but we also want Android to be easier to use and more approachable. In Android 9, we’ve introduced a new system navigation featuring a single home button.

This is especially helpful as phones grow taller and it’s more difficult to get things done on your phone with one hand. With a single, clean home button, you can swipe up to see a newly designed Overview, the spot where at a glance you have full-screen previews of your recently used apps.

Swipe up from anywhere to see full-screen previews of recently used apps and simply tap to jump back into one of them. If you find yourself constantly switching between apps on your Pixel, we’ve got good news for you: Smart Text Selection (which recognizes the meaning of the text you’re selecting and suggests relevant actions) now works on the Overview of your recent apps, making it easier to perform the action you want. You can enable this new system navigation in Settings once you’ve received your update to Android 9 (learn more in the help center).

Changing how you navigate your phone is a big deal, but small changes can make a big difference too. Android P also brings a redesigned Quick Settings, a better way to take and edit screenshots (say goodbye to the vulcan grip that was required before), simplified volume controls, an easier way to manage notifications and more. You’ll notice small changes like these across the platform, to help make the things you do all the time easier than ever.  

Find the balance that’s right for your life

While much of the time we spend on our phones is useful, many of us wish we could disconnect more easily and free up time for other things. In fact, over 70 percent of people we talked to in our research said they want more help with this. So we’ve been working to add key capabilities right into Android to help people achieve the balance with technology they’re looking for. 

At Google I/O in May, we previewed some of these digital wellbeing features for Android, including a new Dashboard that helps you understand how you’re spending time on your device; an App Timer that lets you set time limits on apps and grays out the icon on your home screen when the time is up; the new Do Not Disturb, which silences all the visual interruptions that pop up on your screen; and Wind Down, which switches on Night Light and Do Not Disturb and fades the screen to grayscale before bedtime.

Digital Wellbeing will officially launch on Pixel phones this fall, with Android One and other devices coming later this year. But these features are available in beta now for Pixel phones running Android 9. To try them out:

1. Make sure you’re running Android 9 Pie on your device. (Learn how to check which version of Android you have.)

2. Sign up for the beta with the email address you use with Google Play.

3. Accept your invitation to become a beta tester by clicking the link in your welcome email.

Once you’ve accepted your invitation, Digital Wellbeing will appear in your phone’s Settings app. It may take up to 24 hours for Digital Wellbeing to appear on your device.

Security and privacy baked in

Improving security is always important in each of our platform releases.  In addition to continuously hardening the platform, and an improved security model for biometrics, Android 9 enables industry-leading hardware security capabilities to allow protecting sensitive data like credit card information using a secure, dedicated chip.  Android 9 also brings important privacy improvements, such as TLS by default and DNS over TLS to help protect all web communications and keep them private.

Coming to a device near you

Starting today, an over-the-air update to Android 9 will begin rolling out to Pixel phones. And devices that participated in the Beta program from Sony Mobile, Xiaomi, HMD Global, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and Essential, as well as all qualifying Android One devices, will receive this update by the end of this fall. We’re also working with a number of other partners to launch or upgrade devices to Android 9 this year.

Learn more about Android 9 Pie at android.com/9.

Starting today, you’ll be able to wake up to your favorite music on Spotify with the Google Clock app. Swap out the classic alarm sounds for your favorite pump-up song, a calming soundtrack or a mood-boosting melody.

To get started with musical alarms, make sure the latest versions of your Spotify and Clock apps are installed and connected on your device—this works for both Free and Premium Spotify users. Then choose your perfect wake up music. You can browse recently played music, choose from Spotify’s curated morning playlists, or search for a specific soundtrack.

Now when your musical alarm goes off, it will be a whole lot easier to get moving. After switching off your alarm, you’ll have the option to continue listening to Spotify throughout your day.

This feature will be rolling out globally this week on the Play Store, and will be available on all devices running Android 5.0 (Lollipop) and above.

Whether we’re listening to history lessons on the commute, news stories at the gym, or gripping mysteries while preparing dinner, podcasts have become an essential part of life. But, it can still be difficult to get started and find new shows you’ll love—and work still remains in making podcasts accessible and discoverable for all.

Today, we’re releasing the Google Podcasts app for Android, available globally in the Play Store. Integrated with the Google Assistant across your devices and packed with personalized recommendations, Google Podcasts is designed to make it easier than ever for Android users to discover and listen to podcasts. We’re also announcing a partnership with industry experts to improve diversity in podcast creation, and sharing a peek at how AI can help transform podcasting for the better.

Smarter recommendations with Google Podcasts

With Google Podcasts, you can listen and subscribe to any podcast, including popular shows like The Daily, Cyrus Says, Modern Love, Lage der Nation, The Bill Simmons Podcast, and literally millions more. Beyond the podcasts you already know, Google Podcasts uses AI to offer recommendations based on your listening habits—such as your interest in sports or true crime, or podcasts from a particular network.

Google Podcasts seamlessly syncs across a variety of Google products, including the Google Assistant. So if you’re listening to a podcast on your phone during your commute home, you can resume it on your Google Home when you arrive. Over time, we’ll integrate Google Podcasts into more places you use Google.

How podcasters can optimize for Google

With Google Podcasts, we’re focused on helping podcast creators reach a broader audience. To ensure inclusion in the Google Podcasts app, creators should follow our updated developer guidelines, which you may already be familiar with for other Google apps. In today’s update, a few new sections cover how to:

• Prompt Google to index new podcasts as quickly as possible

• Generate a direct link to your podcast

• Download the Google Podcasts brand assets for sharing on your website

• Track analytics that come from Google Podcasts

Promoting inclusive storytelling in podcasting

Podcasting holds unbounded promise as a storytelling medium, but its future depends on a rich array of stories, voices and creators. While there are more podcasts than ever before, there continues to be an imbalance in who is creating them. Looking at top charts, only about a quarter of the most popular podcasts tend to be hosted by women, and even fewer by people of color.

That’s why we’re also partnering with the podcast industry on a program to increase the diversity of voices and remove barriers to podcasting. The program will be guided by an advisory board from around the world, with the primary goal of enabling skills development and experimentation from underrepresented voices, as well as cultivating ideas and processes that can scale throughout the industry. We’ll be rolling out more details this summer, and we encourage you to fill out the online form if you are interested.

The future of Google Podcasts

We couldn’t be more excited to help people around the world discover podcasts they’ll love, and this is just the beginning. Looking forward, Google Podcasts will be a launchpad for building an even better podcast listening experience using AI.

For example, as speech-to-text technology continues to improve, we’ll be able to provide new features like automatic subtitling, which is especially helpful if you are hearing impaired or in a noisy area without headphones. Powered by Google Translate, subtitles can then be made available in a wide variety of languages, further improving access to podcasts.

We’re excited about where we’re heading with Google Podcasts. To try out the new experience today, visit the Play store.

When we brought Android Pay to Japan in 2016, our goal was to create a unique mobile checkout experience that was tailored to Japanese shoppers. Since then, we’ve unified the different ways consumers pay with Google into a single brand: Google Pay. We’ve also updated the app to make paying faster and simpler, promote easy access to offers, and provide one, convenient place to manage e-money and loyalty cards on mobile using your Google Account.

Now, we’re rolling out two new ways to pay that will make checking out online, in stores, and across Japan even easier.

Suica and WAON now available on Google Pay

Starting today, you can add and manage your Suica and WAON cards in Google Pay if you live in Japan and have an Osaifu-Keitai eligible phone. This means four major Japanese prepaid e-money cards—nanaco, Rakuten Edy, Suica and WAON—can all be used with Google Pay. You’ll be able to pay with Google Pay at the hundreds of locations that accept any of these cards, plus pay on transit anywhere Suica is accepted.

The Google Pay app makes organizing and managing all your cards effortless. You can use the app to quickly sign up for e-money cards using the information from your Google Account, check your balances and easily add money with your credit card, and set up low balance alerts so you’re always ready to go. You can also see your recent activity across all of your cards, get customized offers and rewards, and find helpful tips in the app’s Home tab.

And if you use Google Pay for transit, you can check your commuter pass, bullet train, and green ticket details, plus register your Tpoint and dPoint cards and scan them right from the app.

Adding Suica and WAON brings us one step closer to making paying faster and simpler for everyone, everywhere. Keep an eye out for even more features and new ways to pay in the upcoming months, and get the app now to see just how easy paying can be.

Ten years ago, when we launched the first Android phone—the T-Mobile G1—it was with a simple but bold idea: to build a mobile platform that’s free and open to everyone. Today, that idea is thriving—billions of people around the world rely on their Android phone every day.

To make Android smarter and easier to use than ever, today we’re unveiling a beta version of Android P, the next release of Android.

A smarter smartphone, with machine learning at the core

Android P makes your smartphone smarter, helping it learn from and adapt to you. Take battery life, for instance—I think all of us often wish we had more of it. In Android P, we partnered with DeepMind to build Adaptive Battery, which prioritizes battery power only for the apps and services you use the most, to help you squeeze the most out of your battery. We also used machine learning to create Adaptive Brightness, which learns how you like to set the brightness slider given your surroundings.

Across the platform, your phone will help you better navigate your day, using context to give you smart suggestions based on what you like to do the most and automatically anticipating your next action. App Actions, for instance, help you get to your next task more quickly by predicting what you want to do next. Say you connect your headphones to your device, Android will surface an action to resume your favorite Spotify playlist. Actions show up throughout Android in places like the Launcher, Smart Text Selection, the Play Store, the Google Search app and the Assistant.

Actions are a simple but powerful way for helping you get what you need quickly; but what if we could surface part of the app itself, right when you need it most? Slices do just that, giving you an even deeper look into your favorite apps. If you search for “Lyft” in Google Search, you can see an interactive Slice that gives you the price and time for a trip to work, and it’s interactive so you can quickly order the ride.

We want the entire device experience to be smarter, not just the OS, so we’re bringing the power of Google’s machine learning to app developers with the launch of ML Kit, a new set of cross-platform APIs available through Firebase. ML Kit offers developers on-device APIs for text recognition, face detection, image labeling and more. So mobile developers building apps like Lose It!, a nutrition tracker, can easily deploy our text recognition model to scan nutritional information and ML Kit’s custom model APIs to automatically classify over 200 different foods with your phone’s camera.

A simple, more approachable Android

With Android P, we put a special emphasis on simplicity. The look and feel of Android is more approachable with a brand new system navigation. In Android P, we’re extending gestures to enable navigation right from your homescreen. This is especially helpful as phones grow taller and it’s more difficult to get things done on your phone with one hand. With a single, clean home button, you can swipe up to see a newly designed Overview, the spot where at a glance you have full-screen previews of your recently used apps. Simply tap to jump back into one of them. If you find yourself constantly switching between apps, we’ve got good news for you: Smart Text Selection (which recognizes the meaning of the text you’re selecting and suggests relevant actions) now works in Overview, making it easier to perform the action you want.

Changing how you navigate your phone is a big deal, but small changes can make a big difference too. Android P also brings a redesigned Quick Settings, a better way to take and edit screenshots (say goodbye to the vulcan grip that was required before), simplified volume controls, an easier way to manage notifications and more. You’ll notice small changes like these across the platform, to help make the things you do all the time easier than ever.  

Awareness and control of your digital wellbeing

Technology should help you with your life, not distract you from it. So we’ve been working hard to add key capabilities right into Android to help you achieve your desired balance with technology. Our focus is on giving you a greater understanding of how you use your phone, as well as more controls. A new Dashboard, for instance, shows you how you’re spending time on your device, including time spent in apps, how many times you’ve unlocked your phone, and how many notifications you’ve received. App Timer lets you set time limits on apps, and will nudge you when you’re close to your limit and then gray out the icon to remind you of your goal. The new Do Not Disturb mode silences not just the phone calls and notifications, but also all the visual interruptions that pop up on your screen. And to make it even easier to use, we created a new gesture: if you turn your phone over on the table, it automatically enters Do Not Disturb so you can focus on being present.  Finally, Wind Down will switch on Night Light when it gets dark, and it will turn on Do Not Disturb and fade the screen to grayscale at your chosen bedtime to help you remember to get to sleep at the time you want.

Beyond smarts, simplicity and digital wellbeing, there are hundreds of additional improvements coming in Android P, including security and privacy improvements such as DNS over TLS, encrypted backups, Protected Confirmations and more.  

Android P Beta is available today on Google Pixel. And thanks to work on Project Treble, an effort we introduced last year to make OS upgrades easier for partners, a number of our partners are making Android P Beta available today on their own devices, including Sony Xperia XZ2, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, Nokia 7 Plus, Oppo R15 Pro, Vivo X21, OnePlus 6, and Essential PH‑1.  

Since we first launched Android ten years ago, we’ve been focused on how to build a platform for everyone. Android P is an important step toward bringing machine learning to everyone with an operating system that learns from you, adapts to you and helps you with everyday tasks.

Security experts recommend strong, unique passwords for each service that you use. For most of us, however, it can be difficult to manage credentials across multiple websites and apps, especially if you’re trying to keep track of everything in your head.

In Android 8.0 Oreo, we made it simpler to use Autofill with a password manager, like LastPass, Dashlane, Keeper, or 1Password. Particularly on tiny devices like your phone, autofill can make your life easier by remembering things (with your permission), so that you don’t have to type out your name, address, or credit card over and over again.

With the new autofill services in Oreo, password managers can access only the information that’s required in order to autofill apps, making your data more secure. There’s a specific list of password managers (which you can find in Android Settings) that meet our security and functional requirements, and we’ll be continuing to grow this list over time. If you already use a password manager, then you’ll be able to try the new experience today.

How does it work?

Setting up Autofill on your device is easy. Simply go to Settings, search for “Autofill,” and tap “Autofill service.” If you already have a password manager installed, it will show up in this list. You can also tap “Add service” to download the password manager of your choice from the Play Store.

Once you’ve set a password manager as your Autofill service, the information stored in that app will show up in Autofill whenever you fill out forms (for example, your saved username and password will show up as a suggestion when you’re logging into an app for the first time).

We include Google as an autofill service on all devices running Android 8.0 and above, which lets you use data that you already have saved in Chrome to fill in passwords, credit cards, addresses, and other personal information.

Whether you use Google or another password manager from the Play Store, the new Autofill experience on Oreo makes it easier to securely store and recall commonly typed information, like passwords and credit card numbers.

Android’s mission, from day one, has been to bring the power of computing to everyone. We’re proud that the platform has made mobile technology accessible and useful to billions of people over the last 10 years. While we continue to celebrate Android’s open platform, we’ve been working closely with our partners to bring a consistent hardware and software experience that meets the expectations of users all around the world.

This week at Mobile World Congress, a new generation of smartphones were announced through our two programs: Android Oreo (Go edition) and Android One.

Here’s a recap of all the announcements, straight from Barcelona:

Android Oreo (Go edition)

Android Oreo (Go edition) offers a fast and smooth experience optimized for devices with 1GB of memory or less, while still making sure you have a high-quality experience with the current version of Android and Google Play Protect. Thanks to optimizations to the platform and apps, Android (Go edition) provides double the storage available for use out of the box. At Mobile World Congress, we welcomed some of the first global smartphones to run Android Oreo (Go edition):

• Alcatel introduced its first Android Oreo (Go edition) phone with the Alcatel 1X, featuring the latest Alcatel smartphone design language and technology.
• General Mobile announced the “GM 8 Go,” its first product with Android Oreo (Go edition), as part of the company’s plan to bring computing to more people in Turkey and around the world. 
• HMD Global announced the Nokia 1, a high quality Android Oreo (Go edition) device that delivers smartphone essentials with the reassuring quality users expect of a Nokia phone in a refreshingly familiar design to fans around the world. 
• Huawei has also committed significant resources to supporting Android Oreo (Go edition) smartphones and will be bringing a device to all major emerging markets in the near future. 
• LAVA International Limited introduced the LAVA Z50, which will soon be available at over 100,000 retail stores in India.
• Micromax Informatics gave a first glimpse of BHARAT GO, its first Android Oreo (Go Edition) smartphone, with the goal to convert millions of feature phone users onto these smartphones.
• TRANSSION announced it will release Android Oreo (Go edition) phones across its brands, TECNO, itel and Spice, which will cater to a wide range of consumer groups across a diverse set of international markets, particularly Africa.
• ZTE featured the ZTE Tempo Go, an unlocked smartphone running Android Oreo (Go edition), that looks to provide an optimized and powerful entry level smartphone experience.

Android One

Following the 2017 launches from HTC, Kyocera, Motorola, Sharp, and Xiaomi, we added several new devices to our global Android One portfolio. Each of these devices pairs high quality hardware from our OEM partners with a software experience designed by Google to deliver an experience that is smart, secure, and simply amazing.

To kick off the show in Barcelona, HMD Global unveiled the new Nokia 6, Nokia 7 Plus and Nokia 8 Sirocco, a range of new premium and mid-tier Android One devices. With the latest Google innovations out of the box and two years of OS upgrades, these devices will deliver an easy to use experience that gets better over time. With Google Play Protect and three years of regular security updates, these will be among the most secure devices available.

In addition, BQ recently previewed two Android One devices, the Aquaris X2 Pro and Aquaris X2, both committed to security and a great Android experience. General Mobile also unveiled their fifth Android One device, the GM8, which will be available in the coming months.

In the decade since the launch of Android, we have achieved amazing things due to the open nature of the platform and the vibrant ecosystem of partners. Looking ahead to the next 10 years, we’re committed to strengthening our partnerships to foster innovation, and bringing consistent and high-quality experiences to everyone.

We would also like to congratulate our existing partners on launching their latest flagship phones, including Samsung Galaxy S9, Sony Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact, at Mobile World Congress. Together with the new partners of Android Oreo (Go edition) and Android One, Android will continue to offer great choice and diversity of devices that meet the needs of our users.

Monday kicks off Mobile World Congress in Barcelona—the mobile industry’s largest trade show. Our partners will be announcing amazing new Android devices, you’ll be able to see the growing industry momentum around RCS, and we’ll be showcasing the latest from Google including Google Assistant and Lens. Before the show gets underway, I want to take a moment to reflect on where Android is today and where it’s going.

Android

This fall marks 10 years since the release of the first Android device. Back in 2008, building software for mobile devices was pretty hard. Development was highly fragmented and resource intensive, and there was very limited compatibility across phones. Android began with a bold idea: to solve this problem with a new, open platform that would give mobile developers access to uniform tools and give customers a customized experience with the best mobile technology available.

Today, Android powers more than 2 billion active devices from 1,300 brands across 24,000 unique products. The platform has thrived because of our commitment to openness and the vibrant ecosystem of manufacturers, developers, mobile operators and component suppliers. And together with our partners, many of which you’ll see next week at MWC, we want to continue to push the boundaries of hardware and software to bring you new amazing experiences and capabilities.

Android has achieved unprecedented scale in just 10 years, but there are new markets emerging where consistency in experience is becoming even more important. With that in mind, we want to share an update on Android Oreo (Go edition) and Android One, two programs that help people know exactly what they can expect when they pick up an Android device.

Android Oreo (Go edition): Delivering on our core values of access and experience

We’re inspired by the success of Android across a wide range of devices, including entry-level phones which in many cases are the first and only way people get access to the internet. These devices need to be affordable, and the experience needs to be great. We don’t just want to provide people with access—we also want to provide a useful, high-quality experience.

Last year we introduced Android Oreo (Go edition), an optimized version of Android Oreo tailored for smartphones with 1GB of RAM or less. With a smaller amount of storage and processing power, these phones are less expensive for manufacturers to produce and can be sold at affordable prices, in some cases less than $50. With Android Oreo (Go edition), these phones are able to provide a high-quality experience, with the latest version of Android, Google Play Protect, and dedicated areas in Google Play highlighting apps optimized for Go edition. Android Oreo (Go edition) phones also include a set of apps from Google that are designed to use less memory and storage space, but still offer excellent experiences. For example, Google Go is built specifically to help new smartphone users find the information they want, YouTube Go is optimized for limited connectivity, and the Google Assistant for Android (Go edition) lets people quickly send messages, make calls, set alarms, and more with their voice and a single touch of the screen.

Starting next week, you’ll see the first set of Android Oreo (Go edition) phones, and soon after they’ll be available for you to purchase.

Android One: Smart, secure, and simply amazing

While the openness of Android means manufacturers have the flexibility to offer unique experiences, we know people want some reassurance about what they can expect when they buy a device. That’s why we introduced Android One, a program aimed at providing people with three key things: faster access to the latest Android OS updates and Google innovations, regular security updates, and an easy-to-use software design that’s intuitive and streamlined.

Android One combines Google’s latest software and services with beautifully designed hardware from top partners. With an Android One phones, you can expect:

• Faster access to Android OS updates for two years, including the latest AI innovations from Google;
• Amongst the most secure devices in the ecosystem with regular security updates for three years and Google Play Protect built in;
• A simple, streamlined interface that includes the best of Google services including YouTube, the Google Assistant, Google Maps, Google Photos and more; 
• Performance-tested hardware so you can pick the right device for your needs and know that it will deliver a best-in-class experience for years to come.

We’re excited about the progress we’ve made with Android One in recent months, and at MWC you’ll see news from our partners about some great new Android One devices.

Android wouldn’t be what it is today without our partners. With Android Oreo (Go edition) providing a high-quality Google and Android experience at lower prices and Android One delivering the latest from Android and Google, we’re excited to see what amazing things the next 10 years of Android will bring.