A Recap Of What Was Announced At Google’s 2015 I/O Conference

Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O is taking place May 28th-29th in San Francisco, California. The two day conference is filled with “inspirational talks, hands-on learning, and a chance to hear more about Google’s latest developer products. The search giant is rolling out tons of new announcements, upgrades and upcoming projects. Let’s take a look at some of those big announcements from the I/O conference…

1. Android M

The first major announcement from I/O 2015 was the launch of Android M. Google unveiled that Android M will succeed Android Lollipop this year. Google stated that Android M, which is debuting as a pre-release version today with a full release happening later in the year, brings a large number of new features and performance enhancements. These new features include an upgraded copy and paste functionality, as well as an improvement to power management and USB Type-C support for faster charging. Android M will also offer improved app integration, with a new linking system, allowing apps to open direct and better app permissions system, letting the users to gain better control over the features apps can access.

Another big announcement is called Android Pay which will allow people to use a “single tap” to pay for things either in apps or at brick-and-mortar stores. This new service will also offer rewards programs for customers that purchase items frequently. Android Pay will be playing catch up with Apple Pay which launched a similar app in September of 2014 as a mobile payment and digital wallet service. Google hopes to have mobile payments as one of the next big growth areas to tap into.

2. Project Brillo

Project Brillo is effectively an operating system for small scale devices, such as security cameras and light bulbs. Google has a plan to combine Brillo with another new system called Weave, which will allow these devices to communicate with other connected equipment and web services, giving users more centralized control over a lot of information. Android devices will auto-detect Brillo & Weave connections, allowing its users to combine connected devices more conveniently. The goal of Project Brillo is to help control aspects of you life with an easier, more functional way, so you can manage everything you need from one, single touchscreen.

3. Google Now On Tap

On Tap was the biggest improvement to Google Now. Google Now On Tap is “immediately accessible when consumers are on the Web or in apps. The service also deep-links directly into apps, right to the spot users need, without having to navigate from the homepage. There are no ads yet in Google Now, but they are not hard to imagine, stated Ad Week”. For example, say you are listening to a song on your cell phone and you want to know who the artist singing the song is. You can ask Google “who is singing this song?” and Now on Tap will produce a Google search response that will show up on your screen. The result is a direct answer versus a link showing up in your Google search match.

4. Google Photos

Google also announced a new re-launch of their unlimited picture and video storage app called Google Photos. This app is free and allows you to sort your photos into groups, making it more simple to manage and maintain your photo collections. Google Photos will allow images up to 16 mega pixels to be stored at full resolution. Photos that are taken in higher resolutions will be compressed, however, Google stated that the image quality will not be affected. New search features will automatically analyze and tag uploaded videos or photos, and the same editing tools available with Google+ will be available for Google Photos users.

These are just a few of the main highlights from the first day of the Google I/O conference. Day two is happening now, and surely other big developments in tech integration and advancement will be announced. So stay tuned!