(rubs hands)
- Android 12, it is here or it's being announced.
The new beta where Google actually tells us what
the biggest new user facing features will be,
has been announced.
And, I have seen a demo and I've played around
with the beta here on my phone, and
I have some thoughts.
Do you wanna hear my thoughts
or would you rather just see what's new in Android 12?
Oh, why not both...
This is Android 12.
(upbeat music)
Android 12 looks different from what you're used
to on Android, actually
very different.
Google says that this is the biggest visual overhaul
since 2014, or
maybe ever, depending on who you're asking.
And yeah, a lot of the pieces of this
operating system here
do look very different,
but it all basically still works the same.
You've got a home screen,
you swipe up for apps,
you swipe on for quick settings
and for your notifications, etcetera, etcetera.
What you're really looking at here
with these big buttons and the really big bubbly sliders
and so on
is how the Android team has decided to
implement a new design system
that Google is calling Material U.
Now, Material UX or material UI
just Material U
like
Y O U,
whatever.
Now, when you're looking at
the B roll and the screen recordings
and the screenshots on this phone,
you should know that it is how Google
is implementing Material U on the Pixel.
Whether and how Samsung or Xiaomi
or OnePlus decide to implement it is going to be different.
And also, you know, much later
because their updates always come later than the Pixel.
Anyway, I don't have the full details
on Material U and how it works and so on.
But, I do know that it's supposed to apply to everything
from the web to Android, to apps, to even hardware.
What that means is I'm just, I'm not going to get any
of the HETI UI versus UX versus you.
You stuff here.
I'm just going to talk
about what I am seeing here on this phone.
And what I am seeing is
good.
For the Android team the U part
of material you hear is an automatic theming system.
So, when you set a new wallpaper
you're gonna to be given the option to have Android
pull up some colors from your photo
and then, apply that theme with those colors to the system.
So you can see here that the buttons have turned green,
and there's also an algorithm
for pulling out complementary colors from the photo.
It's kind of neat, but I don't know
that I would have picked this particular green
if I were beaming at myself.
And the good news is
is you can pick whatever colors you really want to.
So that's neat, but really I can tell you the whole story
of this visual redesign just
by looking at a couple of screen recording.
So, here's Android 11 and here is Andrew 12.
So first there's a bunch of
new like lighting effects
when you unlock the phone, you can kinda see colors
and shadows and light kinda sweep around.
And, in general there's just more
animations all over the operating system.
And we're gonna come back to why that is, but
look, they're even taking advantage
of these animations on the lock screen buttons,
and you can see the little color
from the material U theming as well.
Now, when we pull
down the quick settings and notification shade
you see that they are just very big, easy to recognize
easy to understand buttons.
Google's just not afraid of taking up
more space with all of their UI
and they're not trying to cram everything
into the most information dense thing possible.
I actually think it's like a nice direction.
There is another subtle difference
in the notification shade, you can see
that it's just covering the entire screen instead
of sort of being a translucent layer over.
It makes it into an entirely new space.
And if you look at the notifications themselves
you'll see that they're groups together and signified
by a bunch of bubbles for each individual group.
So there's conversations and silent
notifications and whatever.
But if you slide an individual notification away
there's this really subtle effect where the
hard corner turns into a bubble for just
that notification to indicate that
is its own separate thing.
Now on the home screen,
let's just pause a moment to look at these widgets.
They are brand new and they're based
on an entirely new system for making widgets
that is based on these principles
from the material U design system.
So, Google is gonna update a bunch of their
own widgets, but they're also hoping
that they can get a bunch of developers
on board to update their old widgets to the new system.
And, I really hope it works because the widget ecosystem
on Android has gotten really crufty and messy over time
and it is due for a refresh.
Now, next stop are quick settings
and Google changes quick settings every single year.
And this year is no different.
The new thing this year is that
the buttons are huge!
I mean, just look at them, but I don't know.
I kinda like it.
Google also puts smart home controls
and Google wallet into quick settings finally,
which means that now holding down the power button
brings up the assistant just
like it does on the iPhone and on Galaxy phones.
And all of that means "adiós
weird power button menu from Android 11!".
You tried...
Finally in quick settings
there are toggles for camera and mic access
and we're going to get to those in a minute.
Oh you know what, one more thing I just have to talk about
that's not in the screen recordings, the new lock screen
when you don't have any notifications
you have this giant clock on it
and it's dope and it matches your color theme.
We do have notifications.
It's still pretty big.
It just gets a little bit smaller.
It's a good lock screen!
Now the version of the Android beta
that Google is releasing this month, doesn't have all
of the gewgaws and bells and whistles that you just saw
but, there's enough here
that you can see where Google is going with it.
Like, even if you just look at the settings
I have all of the icons and the text is bigger
and they've got this new over scroll animation
that kinda squeezes things together.
It's a big redesign
but it's not a complete overhaul of how everything works.
Every design gets crufty over time.
And Android was definitely starting to show a lot of
inconsistencies as new features piled on
and old ones were kind of half forgotten.
I see this design as a general cleanup.
All the buttons are big and bubbly
and I see a sense
that things are going to be a little bit more coherent now,
and, I dig that.
So that is the new design system, but I wanna come back
to a thing I mentioned at the top to the smoothness thing.
Android has a,
a reputation that the only way to make it smooth
and good-looking is to throw more powerful hardware
at it with faster refresh screens or more RAM or whatever.
With Android 12, Google's promising
that they're going to make the animation smoother
for everybody through software improvements.
So, we sat down with Sameer Samat, the VP
of product management for Android and Google play.
And here's how he explains it.
- So we've done a few things to make things
to make the system feel smooth.
We've reduced lock contention and key services,
[Sameer] activity window and package manager.
What that really means is, there are
multiple different parts of the system trying to talk
to the operating system at the same time.
And that's when you see things jitter
or genic, by smoothing a lot
of that out and by reducing, for example, the amount
of time that Android system server uses by 22%, actually.
We've been able to make all the motion
and animation feel super smooth.
- All right, there are a few other interesting
features that are being announced today.
So, there is a proper remote control app for Android TV.
They're going to have car unlock that works with NFC or UWB
if your phone has it
and that'll work with a few different partners.
And later this year, if you have a Chromebook
it's going to be able to directly access the photo library
on your Android phone.
So next up is privacy updates.
Google is putting privacy updates
in every version of Android.
That is great.
And this year there really are a bunch.
The main thing that Google is trying to
do this year is tamp down on unfettered access
to your location, your camera and your microphone.
So there are new indicators
in the upper right-hand corner when they're being accessed.
And there are those new buttons and quick settings
that just fully turns off your camera or your microphone.
So, when you toggle them off, an app that
looks your camera just
gets a black, nothing.
It thinks the camera's there,
but really it's just getting nothing.
There is also a new privacy dashboard that
will show you how often those sensors
have been accessed and by which apps.
So you can view your data from the past 24 hours
in a pie chart or in a timeline, and then turn
off all the different access stuff from there.
Now for location, there is a new kind of permission that you
can grant to an app that's approximate location instead
of just precise location.
So, say you've got something like a weather app
and you don't want it to know your precise GPS pin
but you want to know what neighborhood you're in,
you can give it an approximate location.
So let's all the privacy stuff for sensors, but there's also
this new part of the operating system called the
Android private compute core.
Now you might think it's a chip because core
but it's not, instead it's, it's like a sandbox part
of the operating system for machine learning things.
It doesn't store data.
It runs processes.
- A good way to think about it is, when you have
these advanced technologies, like for example
speech recognition or natural language processing,
and they need access to certain information.
Another favorite example of mine is smart reply.
[Sameer] Awesome feature, looks at your notifications
your chat notifications, and suggests replies based
on a speech and language model.
All of that runs on device in private compute core.
- From my perspective, basically what all that means is that
if Google wants Android to be able to do something with AI
that you might think is creepy,
now they can put all of those processes in a box
and limit all communication into and out of that box
and everything in the box can't access the network
and it's only accessible via limited API.
So, that all seems great but is it more secure?
We'll see.
So that's all the privacy stuff that Google wants to talk
about but, there is another kind of privacy that
Google really isn't keen on discussing that much.
And that is app tracking for ads.
Now, there have been rumors that Google would follow Apple
and limit some kind of app tracking for things like ads
but, Google also makes all of its money on ads.
So
- Taking a step back on this one,
there's obviously a lot changing in the, in the ecosystem.
One thing about Google is that, it is a platform company.
It's also a company that is deep in the advertising space.
So we're thinking, very deeply
about how we should evolve the advertising ecosystem.
You've seen what we're doing on Chrome.
[Sameer] From our standpoint on Android,
we don't have anything to announce at the moment
but we
are taking a position that privacy
and advertising don't need to be directly opposed
with each other,
[Sameer] that we don't believe is healthy
for the overall ecosystem as a company.
So we're thinking about that
working with our developer partners
and we'll be sharing more later this year.
- All right, well, stay tuned
for news from Google on that later.
And speaking of later,
when are you gonna be able to get Android 12
on your Android phone?
Well, do you have a Pixel?
Because then the answer is easy.
You're going to get it this fall.
Do you not have a Pixel? Well, then the answer is
later.
Google says that the speed
by which companies are updating their phones
to the latest version of Android has improved by 30%
but still,
other manufacturers besides Google
just take awhile to get the latest version
of Android
on their phones.
That's just how Android works.
Alright. That's Android 12,
a huge redesign that adds some consistency
and coherency with big buttons, big sliders, big everything!
There's more theming options.
There's a bunch of privacy indicators.
There's a bunch of stuff that they put
in the developer betas that I haven't even covered here
and a
TV remote.
This isn't the most massive release ever
but you know what, it's enough.
(transition sound)
Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching,
right now it is the middle of Google IO, which means
that there is a lot going on and we're going to
have a lot more coverage of everything Google has announced,
and, you know, in general it's just a big tech week.
So I think there's gonna be a couple more videos
on the verge you're gonna wanna check out...