Android Auto 5.7 prepares to let you add a shortcut to a Google Assistant command

Google recently updated Android Auto’s settings UI with a couple of new elements designed to simplify the connection process. The update added a new ‘Connect a car’ button, instructions to help users connect using a USB cable, and a button to connect wirelessly. Now, Google is rolling out another update for Android Auto with an interesting addition.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

Android Auto v5.7.603944 doesn’t include any noteworthy user-facing changes. The update only brings some improvements for the Do Not Disturb functionality, optimizations for the Dark Mode, and a few bug fixes. But a teardown of the latest APK has unearthed strings of code that point towards an upcoming feature that will make Google Assistant on the app even more useful.

+ <string name="settings_customize_add_assistant_shortcut_activity_title">Assistant Action</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_assistant_shortcut_add_button">Add</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_assistant_shortcut_error_label_empty">Please enter a valid label</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_assistant_shortcut_error_query_empty">Please enter a valid query</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_assistant_shortcut_label_hint">Label</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_assistant_shortcut_launcher_icon_title">LAUNCHER ICON</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_assistant_shortcut_query_hint">Assistant command</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_launcher_shortcut_button">Add a shortcut to the launcher</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_launcher_shortcut_deleted">Item removed</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_shortcut_dialog_option_assistant">an assistant action</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_shortcut_dialog_option_contact">a contact to call</string>
+ <string name="settings_customize_add_shortcut_dialog_title">Add a shortcut to</string>

The strings suggest that Google is working on adding a shortcut to a Google Assistant command in Android Auto. Our Editor-in-Chief, Mishaal Rahman, has managed to enable the feature manually, and here’s what it looks like:

These screenshots show the setup process for adding a new shortcut for an Assistant Action in Android Auto. The feature will let you pick an Assistant command and Launcher icon label for the shortcut during the process. Once the shortcut is set up, you’ll be able to perform your custom Assistant Action from within the app.

It’s worth noting that although Mishaal was able to enable the onboarding process for the feature, he wasn’t able to get the feature to actually work. This suggests that the feature is currently in its early stages of development, and Google may flesh it out in an upcoming Android Auto update. As of now, we have no official information from Google regarding the feature or its release timeline.

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Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.

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Intel’s 11th-gen ‘Rocket Lake’ desktop processors to arrive by Q1 2021

Intel has confirmed that it is preparing to launch its next-generation of desktop CPUs by early next year. The 11th-gen Rocket Lake series is expected to be available by the first quarter of 2021 and will finally bring support for PCIe 4.0, as per the official press release. Notably, Intel had announced the 11th-gen Tiger Lake mobile processors for notebooks earlier this month.

As of now, Intel has not shared any specifics of the upcoming desktop CPU range. One can, however, expect the upcoming processors to be tuned for PC gaming. According to rumors, the new chipsets could arrive by March 2021. While there is no official confirmation, it is likely that Intel will yet again make use of the same 14nm process that has been around for years. This means that just like the recently announced 11th-gen mobile processors, we could see some architectural improvements. The upcoming range is also expected to be compatible with Intel’s 400-series motherboards, allowing users to upgrade with ease. These were announced with the 10th-gen series earlier this year. The most important update will be the support for PCIe 4.0 storage, a feature that AMD has been offering with its existing line of Ryzen CPUs. Intel is also expected to make use of its new Xe graphics as well as bring support for USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4.

Intel’s (rather vague) announcement comes just a day before AMD’s special event where it is expected to showcase its new CPU range based on its Zen 3 architecture. It was probably a last-minute decision by Intel to remind potential customers that there are more products in the pipeline.

There was a time when the desktop PC space was completely dominated by Intel. However, this has changed in recent years. We now see a trend where PC builders (especially gamers) prefer AMD’s Ryzen CPUs as they offer equally good performance at lower pricing. There are also speculations that the next-gen Zen 3 based AMD processors will completely dominate the current line of 10th-gen Intel processors. This essentially means that Team Blue has a huge task at hand if it wants the 11th-gen to be a great success.

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Future ARM CPUs will drop support for 32-bit apps

In May 2020, ARM announced its 2020 CPU lineup, consisting of the ARM Cortex-A78 A-series CPU core and the new ARM Cortex-X1 core, the first coming under the Cortex-X custom CPU program. The new cores haven’t made their way to any shipping devices yet – users will have to wait for early 2021 to see phones powered by the new IP. That’s the way ARM announces its new products: the ARM Cortex-A77 CPU core, announced in May 2019, only made its way to shipping phones in February 2020. The ARM Cortex-A78 and the Cortex-X1 are 64-bit cores like their predecessors, but they also have hardware support for old 32-bit apps. ARM has now confirmed that this will change, though. Future ARM Cortex-A CPU cores will become 64-bit only starting 2022.

This announcement was made by Paul Williamson, VP and GM of Client Business at ARM, at an ARM DevSummit keynote. The news announcement means there will be no hardware support for old 32-bit applications in the future.

This shouldn’t mean bad news for the vast majority of apps, however. That is because Google has required apps submitted to Google Play since August 2019 to be 64-bit. ARM also notes that about 60% of apps are 64-bit compliant already. Most of the apps that aren’t 64-bit don’t belong to Western ecosystems. For app developers, there is plenty of time to update their old apps, considering that CPU cores announced in 2022 will probably make their way to shipping devices only in early 2023. If a 32-bit app is no longer being updated, though, this announcement means it will stop working in 64-bit-only devices that will launch featuring the future ARM Cortex-A cores.

Android itself is already 64-bit, as the operating system introduced 64-bit support with version 5.0 Lollipop back in 2014. However, Android and ARM’s CPU cores continue to support 32-bit applications, which means Android is not a 64-bit-only OS as of now, unlike iOS, which went 64-bit-only in 2017 with iOS 11. The legacy support of 32-bit applications will end in 2022 from the hardware part of the equation, and it’s fair to expect Google to follow this announcement by removing 32-bit app support in future versions of Android. As previously mentioned, this should be mostly invisible to end users.

What are the benefits in moving to 64-bit-only? These include improved performance in the operating system and for apps and games, up to 20% in some cases. It’s also easier for developers as they won’t have to support two binaries. They can focus on optimizing a single 64-bit binary, which could mean quicker update times.

For ARM, the news means that it can drop additional silicon from its CPU designs that it has needed to have legacy 32-bit support. This could save on silicon area, which could mean more powerful CPUs in the same die size. ARM’s 2021 and 2022 Cortex-A CPUs are code-named Matterhorn and Makalu respectively. It’s Makalu that will be making the switch to exclusively 64-bit. ARM has promised a 30% performance increase between the Cortex-A78 announced this year and Makalu, as the company keeps progressing with its CAGR (compounded annual growth rate).

The transition to exclusively 64-bit will start with the big CPU cores. (ARM didn’t state when the Cortex-X series will migrate to 64-bit only, but it’s likely that it will happen either at the same time or before the Cortex-A series.) The Cortex-A55 “little core”, announced in 2017, is a 32-bit/64-bit design, and its successor, which could launch next year, will still have 32-bit support for legacy apps. So the end result will be a CPU cluster design that mixes 64-bit-only Makalu with a smaller 32-bit/64-bit little core such as the successor of the Cortex-A55. The final product, however, will be 64-bit-only from the perspectives of developers and users. The Cortex-A55’s successor will presumably support support 32-bit for a while longer, but it will be irrelevant for users with Makalu powered devices and beyond.

So Android’s move to 64-bit exclusively will take place roughly five years after iOS completed its transition to 64-bit-only in 2017. Again, all of this shouldn’t make much of an effect for end-users, except for the benefit of improved performance. The onus is on app developers to update all of their legacy apps with 64-bit support before devices powered by ARM’s Makalu CPU arrive.

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Via: Android Authority

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Amazon Fire TV gets Live TV support in India through SonyLIV, Voot, Discovery+, NextG TV

Amazon recently launched two new Fire TV Sticks and completely revamped the Fire TV UI to offer users a more personalized experience. The new Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite are scheduled to go on sale in India later this month. And just a few days ahead of the first sale, the company has now announced that it’s bringing Live TV support to Fire TV in the country.

The feature adds a ‘Live’ tab on the navigation page and an ‘On Now’ row on the Fire TV home screen. In these new sections, users will be able to access Live TV channels from content providers like SonyLIV, Voot, Discovery+, and NextG TV. It will soon support live channels from Zee5 as well. Live TV on Fire TV will give users access to channels like Sony SAB HD, Colors HD, SET HD, Nick HD+, Dangal, DD National, News18 India, MTV Beats HD, SONY BBC Earth HD, Mastii TV Music, and Discovery.

Users who have subscribed to the services of any of the content providers mentioned above will see the ‘On Now’ on the Fire TV home screen, with a red bar at the bottom of each thumbnail indicating the real-time progress of the show. The feature also supports Alexa voice commands, and users will be able to access their favorite channels by saying commands like “Alexa, Watch Colors HD.”

Furthermore, users will also gain access to the Fire TV channel guide. The guide will be available in the Options row of the Live tab. Fire TV Lite users will be able to access the guide by pressing the guide button on their Alexa Voice Remote Lite.

Speaking about the new Live TV support, Parag Gupta, Head of Amazon Devices in India, said, “Since launching in India, Fire TV has been offering a vast selection of on demand movies, TV shows, popular apps and features to customers. With Live TV integration, we are making this experience even better by providing instant access to popular, real-time content for our customers without having to switch inputs. It enriches the content experience by streaming live TV on the much-loved Fire TV interface, just by asking Alexa. Amazon will continuously expand this selection and offer the best of live TV experience to our customers.”

The addition of Live TV support to Amazon’s Fire TV spells trouble for India’s already declining cable TV industry. The steep rise in the adoption of OTT platforms during the lockdown seems to have cemented the fate of cable TV in the country.

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Google Assistant prepares keyboard dictation, Driving Mode, and connecting to health services for sleep data

Google Assistant has become the centerpiece of many people’s lives, a tool that can share information, control devices, and provide key reminders. We dug deep into the latest Google App update to see what else Google Assistant will be able to do, and we discovered some new features on the way, including keyboard dictation for select Pixel devices and a dedicated driving mode.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

Google Assistant Driving Mode

Google App version 11.31.9.29 rolled out today on the Google Play Store, and it has signs that Google Assistant’s Driving Mode may finally launch. We managed to surface the onboarding UI for the new feature, though we were unfortunately unable to actually launch the new Driving Mode.

Google Assistant’s Driving Mode was first announced at I/O 2019 where we got our first look. It’s meant to replace the Android Auto app for phones, though Google will still offer the phone interface through a separate app that acts as a shortcut to the old UI. We’ve been waiting for this Android Auto replacement since it was teased at I/O 2019, and it looks like we won’t have to wait much longer for it to go live.

However, it looks like the final UI will look a bit different than what we were expecting. In fact, the new car mode UI shown in Google Maps for some users last week more closely matches what’s shown in the screenshots. The new car mode UI is very clean and reminiscent of Android Auto for Android, with itself provides a clean, minimal interface and quick access to features and services.

The new car mode UI in Google Maps which could be part of Google Assistant’s upcoming driving mode. Credits: AndroidPolice

New Google Assistant Keyboard Dictation

We were also able to enable the new Google Assistant’s integrated keyboard dictation feature, as shown below running on a Pixel 4. In Gboard, you can tap the microphone button to dictate messages and send them (or delete them) all without having to feverishly type it out. You can already do this with the integrated voice input, but once this version of the feature rolls out, you won’t have to download standalone voice models in Gboard. That’ll save some storage space, but the new Google Assistant’s on-device machine learning models should enable voice dictation that’s quicker and more accurate.

Here's a quick demo of the new Google Assistant's integrated keyboard dictation feature on the Google Pixel 4. This feature will probably roll out with the next Pixel Feature Drop, but that's just my guess. pic.twitter.com/NuhPAmiJAy

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) October 1, 2020

 

As you can see in our quick hands on demo, the new feature seamlessly integrates into the keyboard and does a decent job of dictating messages. Of course, we activated it before it’s official launch, so it’s possible that it isn’t running as smoothly as it should be. The last time we saw this feature in action, it was much, much slower, although that’s because it was running on a modded first-gen Pixel device. The keyboard dictation UI was also a bit different, so we’re not sure which of these two interfaces will end up as the final version. We’ll hopefully find out soon, though.

The new Google Assistant is only available on the Pixel 4, Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a 5G, and Pixel 5. Thus, this new keyboard dictation feature will likely be limited to these devices as well.

Connecting to Health Services for Sleep Data

Finally, new strings in Google App version 11.31.9.29 suggest that you’ll be able to connect Google Assistant to health service providers like Fitbit in order to let the Assistant access your sleep data.

<string name="sleep_account_linking_action_button_positive">Connect</string>
<string name="sleep_account_linking_legalese">&lt;p> Your Assistant will get access to your &lt;xliff:g id=provider example=Fitbit>%1$s&lt;/xliff:g> sleep data. Google Assistant will use this data to answer your sleep-related questions across your devices that have personal results turned on. &lt;/p>&lt;p> On devices where you have proactive health and fitness results turned on, the Assistant will show this data, suggestions, and related content without you having to ask. This data also helps troubleshoot and improve your health and fitness experience with the Assistant. Once your Assistant successfully fulfills your request to update, show, or answer questions about this data, Google will delete your audio query. The text from your request and other Assistant usage information is used to troubleshoot, develop, and improve Assistant services. &lt;/p>&lt;p> &lt;b>Things to know&lt;/b> &lt;ul> &lt;li>Disconnect your Assistant from &lt;xliff:g id=provider example=Fitbit>%1$s&lt;/xliff:g> in your Assistant settings.&lt;/li> &lt;li>Turn off personal results, or just your proactive health and fitness results, in your Assistant settings.&lt;/li> &lt;li>Review and delete your Assistant activity at myactivity.google.com.&lt;/li> &lt;/ul> &lt;/p></string>
<string name="sleep_account_linking_legalese_title">Connect %1$s to your Google Assistant?</string>

According to the strings, once connected to a health service, Google Assistant will be able to use your sleep data to answer sleep-related questions. And if you have devices with proactive health and fitness results turned on, Assistant will show this data along with suggestions and related content without you having to ask.

Google (Free, Google Play) →

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Thanks to PNF Software for providing us a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android applications.

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Google Photos tests Premium Print Series, a monthly subscription service that prints your best photos

Google is allegedly working on a new “Premium Print Series” subscription that will send users prints uploaded to its Photos service every month. The search giant previously tested a similar subscription service in Google Photos that was available for $7.99 per month. That service was quietly shuttered at the end of June following the end of the trial program, according to AndroidPolice.

Discovered by Jane Manchun Wong, the new Premium Print Series will provide users with more customization options than the service that was tested earlier this year. For example, you can choose matte or glossy print options, and you can choose border or no border. There’s also an option for including photo information on the back of each photo.

Google Photos is working on “Premium Print Series”,

a subscription service for shipping prints of your photos that Google suggested for you monthly for $6.99/month… nice!

the finish and border are adjustable. you can also skip a month of prints if you’d like

tip @Techmeme pic.twitter.com/b6fQpEZl7O

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) October 7, 2020

Once you choose the options you want, Google Photos will send you ten premium 4×6 prints each month. The ten photos will be chosen by the algorithms in Google Photos, but you can also review and edit what’s selected. You can have as much control as you want, or you can allow Google Photos to do its thing and simply wait for the prints to arrive in the mail.

And if you don’t feel like getting a stack of photos one month — perhaps you didn’t take many noteworthy photos — you can easily pause your subscription. The best part is the service will be just $6.99 per month, which is fairly affordable for what you get. Plus, it’s convenient, making it so you don’t have to go to a physical store to print out photos. That’s worth mentioning in the age of social distancing.

Google Photos currently offers photo books and canvas prints, which are great options but require a lot of legwork from users. The service’s Premium Print Series would make for a nice addition, because you largely “set it and forget it.” For busy families who take a lot of photos but have no time to print them out, the new service coming to Google Photos could be a hit, especially with the holidays coming up. As with any app teardown, though, there’s no guarantee this service will actually launch, but there’s no specific reason for us to doubt it will.

Google Photos (Free, Google Play) →

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Google Assistant is getting a Guest mode for private voice searches

Google on Wednesday published a blog post all about security, reminding users that it takes precautions, like Safe Browsing, to keep people safe everyday. The company also took an opportunity to announce some new privacy features, including a “Guest mode” for Google Assistant that’s set to arrive in the coming weeks.

Guest mode can be enabled and disabled with a simple voice command. Once enabled, any voice interactions won’t be saved by Google, and the Assistant won’t pull data from your Google Account for personalized results.

Google Assistant’s Guest mode feature arrives following controversy over Google’s audio retention policies, when the search giant and other large tech companies came under fire for storing and reviewing audio recordings. The practice became a big scandal in 2019, prompting Google to become more transparent about audio recordings.

In fact, Google said that audio recordings are turned off for everyone by default. If you do want your audio recordings to be saved, you can opt into the program by enabling the Voice & Audio Activity (VAA) setting. Once opted in, any interactions that are saved can be deleted with your voice, or you can navigate to your Google account and delete Google Assistant interactions that way. For more information, you can ask Google Assistant “How do you keep my information private?” for answers about Google’s privacy policies.

Google has worked to introduce similar features to other services, including an Incognito mode in Google Maps. Turning Incognito mode on will prevent Google Maps from tracking where you’ve traveled and saving the places you’ve searched.

You’ll be able to use Google Assistant’s Guest mode in the coming weeks.

Google Assistant - Get things done, hands-free (Free, Google Play) →

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