Google has quite a few applications on Android, but they also have a presence on the iOS ecosystem and have released one app so far that is only available on that particular platform, known as the Gboard keyboard. While Google does plan to take the features of Gboard and add them into the Android ecosystem at some point, they unfortunately aren’t available just yet. Google has just released another new app for iOS today called Motion Stills, which so far has no mention of coming to Android, leaving people to wonder if Google will make the features available to Android users.
Motion Stills is essentially an app that allows you to record video with your device and then turn those videos into still photos with various animated parts. The app is meant to take advantage of the Live Photos features which is available on iOS, but the ability to create these little animated GIF images with a still background would no doubt make Android users happy. Although Google hasn’t mentioned anything about whether or not they will launch an Android version of the app, they haven’t stated that they would not be doing such a thing, so there is always the possibility that they do have plans to make this functionality available on the Android platform, especially when considering that Google does wish to bring this feature to the Google Photos app depending on the feedback they get from the community of users. Having said this, it’s also possible that they only plan to launch the feature withing Google Photos on iOS, so it could go either way for now.
The way that Motion Stills works is by stabilizing videos and then transforming those videos into GIF images using photo bursts, resulting in the examples that are posted below. Google states that no internet connection is needed to create these motion still images and that everything works right on the device, and since they’re fairly short animations, they can be shared pretty easily within messages and on social media just like regular GIF images you would find via the web. Hopefully Google will end up implementing this on Android devices in some form, but until then Android users will simply have to wait patiently and admire how well the technology works.