An upcoming Allo update will include new quick selfie effects according to a recent teardown of the latest update’s APK file. The new quick selfie effects will be readily accessible from the chat window and will hover above the quick selfie frame, offering users the ability to zoom into their images or add some sort of a blur effect before actually snapping the picture. These don’t appear to be working correctly just yet so it isn’t quite clear how the effects will appear for users once they’re implemented, but it isn’t too hard to imagine what the zoom might look like, so the uncertainty surrounding this particular new effect is likely to be more about how much it will zoom in and whether or not users will have the ability to zoom out as well.
In addition to the two new quick selfie effects there are other changes coming to the app as well which users may want to keep an eye out for. One of these changes revolves around the image editing options which are currently available. Once the new changes are implemented, image editing will come along with the ability to add stickers directly onto your images. If you’ve ever been particularly curious about how much data Allo is using up, Google seems to be preparing an option for users to look these details up within the Allo app, although it looks like the data usage information will be saved for an update that is further out. That said, once it hits you’ll be able to see how much data is used up for media, as well as how much data is used up by the messages you’ve sent, and how much data was used on both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. Alternatively if you’d rather see a more broad picture of Allo’s data use, there will be an option to view “all data” as well.
Allo has been confirmed to be getting a web version of the service in the coming weeks, and it looks like this version update of the Android app takes another step towards that goal, by adding a web client settings page where users can view how many computers are connected to the All web client for their Allo account. This might not seem like a big thing, but this suggests that users will be able to sign into Allo on more than one computer. This is a pretty big change over the app as it only supports one connected device, and if you try to sign into another it will make you go through the entire setup process from the beginning, while disconnecting the previous device upon completion.
One of the final changes that should be available in this version is focused solely on Android O users as it pertains to notification channels. While Allo already offers these to users on Android O, there will be new notification channels present which include channels for smart reminders, new in Allo, messages, contact updates, chat suggestions, and one last channel which is labeled as “uncategorized.” It also looks like Allo will have an option for Google Assistant settings which takes you to the Google Assistant app, and one last change which will add some form of message translation, though the translation feature seems to be for a future update as well.
