Android is core part of Google conference

One of those living room devices will be Google Home, a small speaker/voice assistant that (as previously reported) competes with Amazon’s Echo line. If you use Google Calendar, it can be used to check and change appointments.

Research firm Gartner says almost 1.3 billion smartphones running on Android are expected to be sold this year compared with a projected 231,000 iPhones. With the launch of group messenger Spaces this week, this announcement seems unlikely.

Google Assistant: Google has ramped up its efforts in machine learning with a powerful new artificial intelligence tool, Google Assistant.

KitGuru Says: This is an interesting idea, particularly given all of the rumours surrounding the name being Android Nutella, then again, a lot of the rumours surrounding Android names don’t often pan out.

“We want users to have an ongoing two-way dialog with Google”, said Pichai. “[We’re] building each user their own individual Google”. Since more banks mean more customers, Apple Pay may continue its lead over Android Pay in terms of overall number of users at least for the next few months. It’s releasing a new messaging app called Allo that includes a Google bot.

But it also adds a somewhat cool, possibly sad, feature.

In Google’s demo, the remote is used to select apps in VR System UI, toss objects in virtual world, flip pancakes, and even cast your digital fishing rod. If the other person picks up, the video call begins. Google also launched Duo, a video messaging app that lets you see video of the person calling before you answer the phone. Today, it made a new beta edition available to Android app developers, so they can get their footing.

It has a feature named Knock Knock that shows a live video of the caller upfront, letting the receiver see who is calling and what they’re doing. It’s a great chance to catch them still fixing their hair.

Smartphone-based virtual reality experiences are set to take a quantum leap with Daydream, Google VR boss Clay Bavor said Wednesday at the company’s annual developer conference. Google says it will be coming sometime this summer to both Android and iOS. But the biggest feature is ability for Allo to provide Smart Replies for photos. Sorry Windows phone users. Because of this, it’s investing as much as it can into building upon the design principles of Cardboard into its newest standards of VR hardware and software.