In what may be one of the longest roll-outs in the history of Android, some Reddit users are now reporting a new feature in their Google Play Store application. The update includes a feature that offers to let users know when a page within the app has finished loading – which is usually instantiated after the connection is lost during a Play Store search and is accompanied by the usual “can’t load page” message. Essentially, rather than having to continue opening up the Play Store manually, checking to see if the page has loaded yet, a notification will pop up from the app itself once the connection is restored. The feature appears to be part of a larger roll-out which has slowly incorporated similar features across several of Google’s core applications – such as Google Now. More generally, it marks yet another improvement in Google’s long quest to improve its Play Store.
The goal of the update is obviously to save users time and effort in checking for things such as web pages or app pages to have finished downloading when on a sub-optimal connection. Users can opt in to be notified and can come back to what they were doing in the Play Store after it has had a chance to load the content completely. The feature should be a welcome respite for users who live in areas where their mobile connection is spotty or where Wi-Fi speeds aren’t necessarily as good as they could be.
While it may seem really strange is that it has taken so long to roll out – at least one Redditor has pointed out that it started months ago. There are a lot of mobile devices out there that run Google’s software. Beyond that, they all run substantially different versions of the OS and most have their own manufacturer software laid over the top of that. Throw in a couple of other factors, like the fact that features like these are being applied across a number of very different Web-connected applications, and it becomes easy to see how difficult it can be to implement features in a stable manner across the board. So users shouldn’t worry too much if they haven’t seen the update yet, but, as of this writing, this update does appear to be taking a bit longer than normal.
