Google Unveils 9 New Features for Android and Wear OS

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona this week, Google announced new features rolling out for Android and Wear OS “to improve connectivity, productivity, accessibility and fun across your devices.”

Here are 9 new features for Android and Wear OS, as detailed by Google on Monday in a blog post.

Google Keep single note widget will soon let you manage notes and tick off to-dos right from the Home screen.

Coming to Wear OS for Google smartwatches, there will be two new shortcuts for Google Keep from the watch face, as seen below. You can dictate your note and also add a reminder for it as well, right from your Google smartwatch.

Another productivity feature is the ability to use a stylus or touch to annotate PDFs in the Google Drive app for Android.

Coming audio and pairing enhancements:

• Google Meet: now offers noise cancellation on Android mobile devices
• Fast Pair: will soon let you connect Bluetooth headphones to Chromebook with one tap; if already set up with an Android phone, your Chromebook will automatically connect to them as well, similar to Apple AirPods and iCloud pairing.

Some new Android features for fun include:

• Emoji Kitchen: new emoji combinations to make and share stickers via Gboard
• Google Wallet: new tap to pay animations to confirm in-store transactions
• Chrome: increase size of content by up to 300%, starting in March; test it with Chrome Beta via Settings > Accessibility

Wear OS 3+ will debut two new sound and display modes to improve accessibility on watches. Mono audio is coming, along with colour-correction and grayscale modes.