Google innovations at Google I/O

June 26, 2014

Android Wear (credit: Google)

Google announced several innovations at  7th annual Google I/O developer conference (Google I/O) Wednesday. Among them:

Android Wear connects your phone to your wrist (say “Ok Google” to ask questions, read or send a text, get alerts, schedule a meeting, etc.). Google also announced that two Android wearables, the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live, are available to order today, and the Moto 360 from Motorola will be available in the coming months.

Android Auto will allow you to connect your Android phone to an Android Auto-enhanced car (later this year) for  turn-by-turn navigation from Google Maps, your curated playlists and radio stations through Play Music, simple-to-use voice search, reminders from Google Now, using car controls.

Android Auto: The right information for the road ahead (credit: Google)

Chromecast, a small, affordable device, will let you cast online video, music and anything from the web to your TV. And Android TV will allow voice search to find a live TV show, movies from Google Play, or a music video on YouTube. Both will ship with products from a range of consumer electronics companies later this year.


Android coming to a screen near you (credit: Google)

Android One will address the mobile computing needs of those in emerging markets by providing smartphones that are high quality, affordable and come with reasonable data plans. Google partners will launch an initial range of sub-$100 Android One smartphones starting in India this Fall.

Cardboard VR viewer (credit: Google)

Cardboard puts virtual reality on your smartphone and lets you build your own app using the VR Toolkit at http://g.co/cardboard. You can make your own Cardboard viewer using the instructions at http://g.co/cardboard.