A teardown has been performed on the latest iteration of Google’s Allo messaging application, revealing new photo cropping tools and further emoji support under the hood. It bears mention any of the new additions found during an APK teardown could fail to show up for users since inactive code associated with new functionality is often added to applications before features see an official release. With that said, the two hinted features found buried in the code for version 21 of Allo should prove useful, if and when they finally do hit users.
First, the teardown has unveiled that a new interface has been added in order to allow users to crop a profile photo while setting it. That may not seem like that big of a deal and certainly isn’t groundbreaking but previous iterations of Google Allo only allowed a user to perform their own crop when they first set their profile image. Subsequent changes to that photo, following the initial app setup, were previously adjusted automatically by the application itself, making it highly probable that image wouldn’t display at all how it was intended. That’s not necessarily problematic, but could be exceptionally annoying for anybody concerned with how they’re presenting themselves in a conversation. Meanwhile, the second new feature will probably help to clear up at least some problems with clarity and communication for users who are fond of inserting emoji into their messages. That’s because code found within the APK suggests support is being added for Android’s EmojiCompat library. What that means is that even if the latest emoji aren’t available for a given device to send out, that device’s user will still see the emoji if it is sent to them. Previously, receiving an emoji that wasn’t on the user’s device would result in a nondescript, empty box or simply a blank space. That change isn’t necessarily huge either, but should at least alleviate some confusion for the majority of users who communicate across a wide variety of Android devices that each support the sending of different emoji.
As mentioned above, neither of the two new features has necessarily been activated as part of the newest version of Android. Having said that, they should appear sooner, rather than later, now that the changes have begun to be committed to code. Anybody interested in seeing whether the changes are showing on their end or even in checking out Google’s Allo for the first time should hit the Google Play Store button below.
