ISSUE 88 • ANDROID ADVISOR 5Don’tbeembarrassedbyyoursearchhistory- you’llbeabletoquicklydeleteit.
wasevena ‘onemorething’moment
in ProjectStarline.Belowarethebig
announcementsfromGoogleI/O2021.
ANDROID 12
Oneofthemorehotlyanticipated
announcementsofGoogleI/O 2021
wasAndroid12,thenextiteration
ofAndroidforsmartphones.Google
saidthatit rethoughteveryaspect
ofAndroid,from the basic UI to
notifications to quick settings. The result?
What Google calls ‘Material You’.
As Google normally does, it will
launch Android 12 first in its Pixel phones
- but it did not announce any new Pixel
hardware, or any hardware at all. Good
news, though: Google said it’s made
under-the-hood improvements to speed
up Android 12 by up to 22 per cent. This
should allow it to run on cheaper, less
powerful hardware.
Android 12 will automatically
generate personal colour palates with
a ‘designer’s eye’. The ‘Material You’
Android UI revamp begins with a phone’s
wallpaper: Select an image, and Android
will recalibrate the device’s interface
colour palette to complement it. Google
says that Android 12 will ‘flex’ to every
device, too, adapting the UI to different
devices, with adjustments to layout, and
colour – even line widths. And that goes
for third-party apps, too.
Quick Settings have been reworked,
emphasizing Google Pay and your
Google smart home ecosystem Home
controls. New privacy indicators will tell
you when apps are using your camera or
mic, and a new Private Compute Core
will allow Google’s AI to perform tasks
that would normally require help from
the Google cloud to execute.
Finally, there’s a big change to
Google Assistant: Just give the power
button a long press to access it.
For a more in-depth look at Android
12, go to page 16.PRIVACY
For the past year, Apple has made
‘privacy’ one of the watchwords of iOS.
At I/O today, Google responded with
a number of privacy-focused features –
such as the Android-specific features,
above – alongside frequent reminders