Google today is releasing five new features to Android phones to make the user experience a little bit better. Or a lot better depending on how they impact your own personal experiences with your device.
All five new Android features are built with the idea of improving your quality of life in some way or another. Like the Bedtime Mode for example.
This is a feature which Google created to help people wind down without getting interrupted by incoming notifications. The idea is that it promotes a better night’s sleep. Because you aren’t getting bogged down with more emails and messages.
That’s just one of the features though. And technically Bedtime Mode isn’t 100-percent new.
Bedtime Mode, one of the five new features, is expanding to all Android devices
Bedtime Mode is a feature which has been on Android for a little while now but it wasn’t available to most devices.
Today Google is expanding the Bedtime Mode feature to all Android devices. So long as they’re running on Android 6.0 or later. Which, quite honestly is most devices that run Android these days. So just about everyone should have it.
With Bedtime Mode, you can configure your device to enter into this non-interrupted state to help you focus more on your rest. To do this, you set a designated time for winding down, and one for getting your day started.
Each night your device goes into Bedtime Mode at your preset time. The next morning, it’ll come out of it to allow notifications again.
Aside from the do not disturb mode being activated, Bedtime Mode also turns your phone screen to grayscale, and lets you set a wake alarm with your desired alarm sound. It also incorporates sleep sounds to help you drift off into a nice little snooze.
There are a number of them to choose from within the system, or you can search for stuff on apps like YouTube Music or Spotify as these are integrated with it. If you want to check out Bedtime Mode for yourself, you can now find it in the Clock app in very its own tab.
You will need to make sure you have the latest version of the app though.
Android Auto gets daily schedule view & your phone can now detect earthquakes
The remaining four features all have something a little bit different to offer. They’re all still useful though.
If you have Android Auto in your vehicle, it’s now possible to use it to look at parts of your daily schedule. Using this you can glance at things you may need to get done throughout the day. All the while without having to fumble with your smartphone.
Android devices also now detect earthquakes using the Android Earthquake Alert System. This works for all devices running on Android 5.0 and above.
Meanwhile all devices running on Android 4.1 and above will get a new ELS feature. Specifically your device can share your language when you call an emergency number. This allows the operator to know whether or not you speak the local language and get a translator as soon as possible if necessary.
Lastly, Google is adding some new features to its computer vision app Lookout. Namely the capability to take a picture of longform document and have it scanned into a readable text format.