Android May be Getting Gestures and Other Smarter Features

BY Evan Selleck

Published 7 Mar 2017

Google is likely unveiling a new version of Android at this year’s Google I/O developers conference in May.

Ahead of that, though, VentureBeat has a report detailing some new features that are being developed for Android, but, sadly, may not make the cut for the next iteration of the mobile platform. According to the report, Google’s features are meant to make accomplishing tasks on Android a tad easier, whether that’s copying content, or using gestures.

When it comes to gestures, the report states that Google may roll out a way to simply draw a letter on the display and launch an app. The one example provided is drawing a “C” on the screen and having the system launch a list of recent contacts. This is already possible using Assistant and one’s voice, but a quick scrawl on the screen might be faster.

One of the other new additions is called “Copy Less.” This would cut down on the need to copy and paste text from one app to the next:

“As an example, if you and a friend are having a conversation in a chat about where to eat dinner and you find a good restaurant in the Yelp app, when you go back to your conversation and type “it’s at,” one automatically generated suggestion in Gboard would be the restaurant’s address. You can just tap it, and the keyboard will populate the text box with the address, which you can send with the send button — instead of using Android’s pointers for copying just the right amount of text in Yelp and then pasting in the messaging app.”

Google is indeed doubling down on artificial intelligence and smarter features, so these new additions would be right in line with what we’ve seen from the company in the past, but, hopefully, vastly improved.

[via VentureBeat]