According to the latest figures from the Android Developers site, fewer than two percent of Android users have migrated to Android 7.0, the latest version of the mobile platform. That hasn’t stopped Google from rolling out new versions of its OS every year though, and late last month, one of the company’s senior VPs actually began teasing the next dessert-themed update with a playful tweet to a journalist.
It would be uncharacteristic of Google to spoil the name of an Android update this early, but on Tuesday, VentureBeat shared some information regarding the update that sounds slightly more realistic.
According to VentureBeat’s source, the following three features could all be part of the Android O update later this year. The first is called Copy Less, and will reportedly give your Android phone the ability to automatically detect the relevant information you would want to copy from a source when you’re sending a text or an email. VentureBeat provides the following example to illustrate the feature:
“[If] you and a friend are having a conversation in a chat about where to eat dinner and you find a good restaurant in the Yelp app, when you go back to your conversation and type “it’s at,” one automatically generated suggestion in Gboard would be the restaurant’s address.”
That way, (in theory) you won’t ever be copying and pasting a bunch of irrelevant information and then deciding whether or not it’s worth the effort to delete the sections of text that you don’t want to send.
The second rumored feature would come straight from Apple’s playbook: the ability to tap on an address in a message and have Google Maps automatically open and point you to that location. This functionality has existed on iOS for years, so it’s about time Android got it too. Unfortunately, the source couldn’t confirm or deny if the Google Maps links would work on third-party messaging apps.
Finally, the source claims that finger gestures could be included in Android 8.0. One of the gesture commands would allow users to draw the letter “C” on their display to bring up their contacts. The source says that the gestures could be delayed or scrapped altogether, so don’t hold your breath for that one.
