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Google Announces Allo, Duo, Stable Android N Preview, Instant Apps
Also at the conference, Google announced Allo, a new smart messaging app, and Duo, a high-definition video chat app for Android and iOS devices. TechCrunch reports: Why the decision to launch two separate apps? A couple of reasons, it seems. The first is to keep the experiences simple and lightweight; and the second: to do something a little different from the rest of the pack. Facebook, for example, has supercharged Messenger with smart bots, as well as voice and video calling and more on top of its basic text messaging service. Allo leverages Google's assistant bot to prompt interesting and relevant responses to texts. Duo is a one-to-one video chatting app with a number of interesting features including "Knock Knock" which lets you see the real-time video of the person calling you.
Google has also released the third preview of Android N. The company says that it is now safe enough to be used on your primary smartphone and tablet. The new update comes with a feature called "Seamless Updates" which will install system updates in the background.
The company also announced Instant Apps, a feature that will allow users to tap an Instant App URL, and run the app without installing it. Clicking on Instant App URL, Google says, only gleans the parts of the app that you need for a specific purpose. The feature will work on all phones running Android 4.2 or newer version, and will be available starting later this year.
Google has also released the third preview of Android N. The company says that it is now safe enough to be used on your primary smartphone and tablet. The new update comes with a feature called "Seamless Updates" which will install system updates in the background.
The company also announced Instant Apps, a feature that will allow users to tap an Instant App URL, and run the app without installing it. Clicking on Instant App URL, Google says, only gleans the parts of the app that you need for a specific purpose. The feature will work on all phones running Android 4.2 or newer version, and will be available starting later this year.
Will someone PLEASE come up with an interoperable chat protocol, because I'm getting sick of every single person I need to communicate with wanting me to use yet another messaging app that no one else I know uses.
Alright, I'm a Google fanboy, so I typically give them the benefit of the doubt, but seriously? What happened to Hangouts being their unified messaging app??
According to a friend on the relevant team, too many users found it confusing, and couldn't tell whether they were sending SMS or Hangouts messages. I think the idea was to build a platform that would "just deliver the message, I don't care how", but there too many case in which people actually *did* care how it was delivered, but didn't feel like they knew what was going to happen.
Bottom line: user studies showed that most people preferred separate apps for SMS and Hangouts messaging.
I prefer the unified app myself, and I still have Hangouts set to be my SMS app. My kids all prefer separate apps, though. I think this is a power user vs average user difference, and Google focuses primarily on the average user.
No, Google doesn't have any control over that.
Isn't Google holding the source code?
No, actually.
Google develops the base system, but OEMs modify the source -- sometimes heavily -- before they build and ship it, and they do not give Google a copy of the source of the code they ship. In general, Google has no ability to build system images for non-Nexus/Pixel devices.
In addition there are lots of firmware components that Google doesn't have any visibility into at all. For example, I work on the hardware-backed keystore, which requires a bit of firmware that runs in a trusted execution environment (e.g. ARM TrustZone). I defined the interface (the Hardware Abstraction Layer, or HAL) and I wrote the reference implementation of that HAL, which is actually used on a small number of devices that ship with the Google-provided TEE. But the vast majority of devices use an implementation of the HAL from another provider. Qualcomm, Trustonic, nVidia and Intel all write their own versions, and those are just the ones I know about. There may be others. I have no visibility into their code, and sometimes changes I make in the keystore system daemon or at the framework level are incompatible with their implementations. In an ideal world, the HAL should be so tightly-specified, and the compliance test suite so thorough, that I can have confidence that their implementations work exactly the same as the reference implementation. In reality, stuff is complicated, there are corner cases and subtle misunderstandings that no one foresaw. And don't forget about OEM changes.
So, per-device testing of the final per-device build is absolutely essential to have any kind of stability. Which means that OEMs have to do it. And carriers often don't trust that OEMs have done it adequately, so they insist on doing their own testing as well.
I should also point out that many of the other firmware components (bluetooth, wifi, camera, baseband, etc.) have dozens of implementations, not just a few like mine.
All of this is both the greatest strength and, IMO, the greatest weakness of the Android ecosystem. It's a strength because there is power in diversity, ability to hit more market niches at more price points and meet more users' needs. It's a weakness because the diversity means there's a lot more work to be done to test and validate changes, and because designing for an open ecosystem is a lot harder than for a closed one. Sometimes I think I should go work for Apple because my life would be much easier.
OTOH, if I worked for Apple, I'd probably be swarmed by lawyers for writing a post like this one, among other things I dislike about Apple's culture. Also, if I worked for Apple my work would have much less impact on the world.