Google’s Latest Android Feature Drop Brings Productivity Boosts and Customization – CNET [CNET]

The company says to keep an eye out for “cheerful penguin” animations, coming to Google Wallet soon.

Google’s latest Android feature drop landed on Monday with some slick updates designed to make your life easier, with the promise of more to come.

Rolling out immediately are features including freehand annotation for Google Drive on Android, noise cancellation in Google Meet and page zoom for Chrome on Android, which will let you upsize content by up to 300% to make it more readable. It’s not all work and no play either, as Google is bringing more emoji combinations to its Emoji Kitchen features, which allows you to mash up your favorite emojis to create personalized combinations.

As the world’s biggest mobile show kicks off in Barcelona on Monday, Google’s influence can be felt everywhere. With Android the dominant operating system across the phones at the show, it’s no surprise that Google is taking advantage of the opportunity to offer up new features to users.

An upcoming feature set to roll out in the next few months is the new Google Keep single note widget, which will allow you to manage your notes and check off your to-do lists from your Home Screen. Perfect for organizing on the run, the widget also syncs with your smartwatch to ensure you don’t miss a thing. 

Wear OS is also getting two new Google Keep shortcuts to make it easier to create notes and to-do lists from your watch face. Other new features coming to Wear OS are two new sound and display modes geared toward better accessibility. These are designed to reduce the disorientation from split audio and improve visibility with grayscale and color correction options.

At CES back in January, Google made a big deal about providing easier ways for people to connect devices to each other. Carrying on that trend, it will soon allow you to connect your Blueooth headphones to your Chromebook with just one tap and allow them to automatically connect when they’re nearby after initially being paired. Tap-to-pay animations will soon be coming to Google Wallet to help provide visual confirmation of payments. Google says to look out for “cheerful penguins” and more.