Google Play Services could be described as somewhat of a backbone of the Android operating system, or at the very least in intricate web that weaves many parts of it together as it’s now integrated into many things including Google Play itself and loads of the different apps out there like the Search app and more. As such, a decent amount of detail can potentially picked up from looking at teardowns of the latest Play Services apk when it pops up. In this case, Play Services version 7.5 which was already discussed earlier this morning on a few points. There appears to be more to consider though.
In the latest version of the apk, it appears that there are some references to something called Sidewinder. The mentions of project Sidewinder are not immediately revealing but the logo associated along with the code strings seems to suggest that Google Play may be making its way to China, as the image shows what is more or less the Chinese national flag with a symbol of the Play Store in place of the big golden star that is normally seen on the Chinese flag. Whether this will be a full blown version of Google Play inside of China or a version with stripped down access is unclear, but at the least it seems Google Play will in some way have a foothold on Chinese Android devices in the future.
There are also more mentions along with associated imagery about Kids Accounts coming to the Android operating system. Kids accounts will be a kids-oriented version of profiles which is already incorporated into some version of Android. With kids accounts, parents will be able to set limits on the content their kids have access to. These new details seem to showcase a couple of the screens kids will see at different times when they’ve reached certain points within their access limit. One called timeout, which points to children with bad behavior, shows what the screen will look like when parents have locked their kids’ device for not acting accordingly. The other, termed bedtime, shows up as a picture of starry night sky to denote that parents want their kids to put their devices down and get ready for bed.
In addition to the details above there is also some code strings with a little bit of information on Chrome Sync, which may suggest that it could be getting incorporated into Play Services at some point in the future. For what is still unclear. Lastly, there are code strings which show up starting off with “auth_signin” which are then followed by the icons for Facebook and Google and their respective brand colors. There are also mentions however of other brands along with their iconic color themes including Microsoft, PayPal, LinkedIn and others, which may suggest Google is working on something with the sign-in process with accounts associated with these companies. There are seemingly less details about the sign-in information than most everything else here, so there’s no telling if we’ll hear anything about it at Google I/O next week, but if Google were to dish out more details soon, this is where it might be expected.