During Google I/O, the company announced 41 new additions to Google+ on the web, a lot of them focused on photos and of course, the new Hangouts. Now, they’re releasing the 42nd thing; an update to the Android app. We all knew that something like this was coming, after all Google aren’t going to leave their Android app lagging behind their web-based offerings now are they? As to be expected, Google are focusing on their photo offerings in this latest update.
First of all, the app update (which brings the version up to v4.0) adds the following additions to how photos are dealt with on mobile:
- Auto Backup, to safely and privately store your photos as you snap them
- Auto Highlight, to browse a selection of top shots from every set of photos you add
- Auto Enhance, to make subtle improvements to the people and places in your images, automatically
- Auto Awesome, to create fun new versions of your pictures (like animations and panoramas) based on the photos in your library
As well as this, there are some changes to the way you an edit and alter your photos, giving you a little more flexibility on the go. Essentially, in the V4.0 update, Google are bringing some of Snapseed’s photo filters and enhancements over to the Google+ app.
There are changes to how the stream acts as well. This takes advantage of the related tags system that Google announced at I/O. In the screenshot below, you can see the #GoogleIO2013 tag, tapping on that, will bring you a stream of posts with that tag in them, giving you the ability to see more of what you want, and less of what you don’t want.
There are some changes to location as well, notably the addition of the “Locations” tab in the drawer, which will show you the location of friends that have it shared, which could be a little creepy, depending on your outlook.
Google are telling us that there’s more on the way as well, with mentions of Hangouts and a mysterious mention of a 43rd addition, wonder how long Google can keep this up?
[Source: Google Plus Blog]