During the world’s largest mobile phone-related exhibition Mobile World Congress (MWC 2023), Google announced the latest additions to the upcoming Android updates and Wear OS.
About half of the announced features have already been rolled out.
Page Zoom in Chrome for Android: Previously, pinch-to-zoom in Chrome for Android zoomed the entire page like zooming a static image. From today on Chrome Beta, you can zoom in by pinching while only expanding the size of text, images, videos, and controls while maintaining the page layout. (Will roll out to stable channel soon). This zoom is available up to 300%. Chrome for Android will also let you set a default zoom level, so you don’t have to pinch every time.
Google Meet Noise Cancellation: This Feature is technically already available on some phones and tablets but is now available on more phones.
Freehand PDF Annotation Now Available in Google Drive: You can scribble notes on PDFs using your finger or stylus within the Google Drive application. You can also highlight text to make it stand out when you or your colleagues read it.
New Emoji Kitchen Combos: Combining two different emojis is already possible with Emoji Kitchen for Gboard, but now you can create even wilder combos.
Features available at a later date
Google hasn’t said exactly when the rest of the new Android features would be coming, but they’re coming soon.
Fast pairing with Chromebook: If you have earbuds, you can soon connect them to your Chromebook with just one tap. What’s more, if the earbuds are already connected to your Android phone, they will automatically be available on your Chromebook without even needing to be set up.
Google Keep Single Note Widget: This new widget lets you manage your notes and check off your to-do list from your home screen.
Tap-to-pay animation in Wallet: As soon as you successfully tap-to-pay on your Android device with Google Wallet, you’ll see a new animation confirming the transaction.
Google Keep on Wear OS: Get quick access to Keep notes and other features from the main watch face on Wear OS 3+ smartwatches. Create notes with new shortcuts and keep them on your watch face.
New Wear OS Sound and Display Modes: These new Wear OS 3+ features improve accessibility on your watch. You’ll be able to have mono audio instead of stereo and use colour correction and grayscale display modes.
So which feature did you like the most?
