As we covered earlier, a trio of Google Play apps have been updated, mostly with bug fixes and tweaks here and there but, the Play Music app has some hidden secrets to reveal. Android Police have gone and done it again and torn down the APK for the new Play Music update and they’ve found some pretty interesting things under the surface. One of them is Chromecast, what the hell is that? Well, judging by the code string below, it looks very much like Chromecast is going to be Google’s answer to Apple’s Airplay.
Unable to start a session with the Chromecast device.
Lost connectivity with the Chromecast device.
<string name=”error_ramp_command_failed”>Failed to control the media.</string>
Not currently connected to the Chromecast device.
We’ll be honest, we’re not developers here, and we have no clue what we’re looking at so we’re glad that Android Police has uncovered the truth behind it. Basically, Chromecast is looking like it’s a device you hook up to speakers or your TV and then stream music to it, a la Apple’s Airplay. There’s this cute logo found inside the APK as well:
If any of you are used to hooking up your Xbox to your YouTube account so you can watch those cat videos over lunch, you’ll note that this looks exactly like the send to TV button inside of the YouTube app. While Chromecast isn’t the best name for something like this, we can sort of see where Google is coming from here. They need something that sticks out as being “from Google” and Chrome is pretty synonomous with Google these days. They could do something with the “Play” branding but “Playcast”, “Playstream” – that’d be worse.
As well the unearthing of Chromecast, there seems to be support for SD Cards coming soon as well, the following string apparently tells as much:
<string name=”sdcard_dialog_title”>Download Storage Location</string>
<string name=”sdcard_no_cards”>No SD cards found</string>
<string name=”sdcard_internal_storage”>Device Storage</string>
<string name=”sdcard_error”>Unable to use your storage location.</string>
<string name=”sdcard_space_formatting”>%1$s %2$s / %3$s %4$s</string>
<string name=”units_bytes”>B</string>
<string name=”units_kilobytes”>kB</string>
<string name=”units_megabytes”>MB</string>
<string name=”units_gigabytes”>GB</string>
<string name=”units_terabytes”>TB</string>
<string name=”sdcard_removed_dialog_title”>Storage unavailable</string>
<string name=”sdcard_removed_dialog_message”>The selected storage device has been removed. To keep music, please insert the storage device or select a different download storage location from Settings.</string>
<string name=”sdcard_missing”>Storage device removed</string>
If you’re interested in trying this out, head on over to Android Police where Ron has a little walkthrough on how to get it to work. It’s clear that Google isn’t quite ready to roll this feature out yet, but the foundations have been laid and there’s nothing to say that Google won’t implement such a feature however, their obvious distaste for SD Cards doesn’t leave us holding our breath.