Recently, I’ve been delving into what could be one of the most significant Android advancements in recent history.
It’s an exciting new feature that’s set to revolutionize the way we interact with our devices. It’s something you really have to experience to fully understand, as it’s changing the way we use an existing function. Despite being a subtle shift, it holds immense real-world value.
The feature, while new and currently available on a limited number of Android devices, is actually quite familiar. If you’ve been following Android for a while, you’ll likely recognize it as a modern version of a system from nearly a decade ago.
The feature is Google’s Circle to Search system, now available on the new Galaxy S24 phones and Google’s Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro devices. After using it regularly on my personal Pixel 8 Pro for about a week, I believe it’s a brilliant innovation and more important than most people realize.
And that’s despite it being an almost exact replica of a once-high-profile offering from our Android past.
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Google’s on-demand Android search foundation
Let’s go back to 2012, when Google introduced Google Now, a concept that made contextual information available proactively, before you even realized you needed it.
It was part of the Android 4.1 (known as “Jelly Bean”) version and was described as “Android’s new secret weapon.” It was about making technology about the user, not the device, and providing streamlined simplicity.
It truly felt like the future — a natural progression in putting our devices one step ahead of us and making them seem like extensions of ourselves instead of just isolated islands.
And, particularly pertinent to our current discussion, it paved the way for another futuristic feature just a few years later — a little somethin’ called Google Now on Tap, which took that same concept and integrated it even more seamlessly into the…
2024-02-09 17:00:04
Article from www.computerworld.com