Android and Wear OS are getting massive improvements thanks to these new features

While there are a lot of new hardware announcements during Mobile World Congress, Google has arrived to the show to share plenty of software enhancements for Android and Wear OS. The company is unveiling nine new features that will be coming to users today and in the near future, improving the experience on both operating systems. As you can imagine, this is all quite exciting, so let’s get started with the features that are arriving today.

 

Google is launching four new features that that will be available Android phone and tablet users. The change comes to Chrome on Android, giving users the ability to zoom in on content without having the formatting get strange. The new zoom feature will allow users to crank websites viewed on the browser up to 300 percent. Best of all, since formatting of the website is taken into consideration, the layout of the webpage will still remain true even when zoomed in.

Google is once again providing users with more emoji to use through its Emoji Kitchen feature. While Google hasn’t shared just how many new additions there are, users can now combine even more emoji together to make their very own custom emoji. Just make sure you have GBoard installed to make use of it. Hopping into productivity software, Google Meet will now have noise cancellation, meaning you’ll have more flexibility when you have a meeting, allowing you to take a meeting on the go and no one will be any wiser that you’re on a busy street or crowded train.

Perhaps Galaxy S23 Ultra users will find this quite useful as Google Drive will now support annotations with a stylus going forward. That means folks that own a smartphone with stylus support will be able to jot down notes and highlight text. Of course, even if you don’t have a stylus, Google will still allow you to perform these actions with your finger. So far we’ve got a pretty good feature set arriving on Android devices, but let’s now take a look at what’s on the horizon.

Although Google has not stated when these features are coming, they have shared that it will arrive sometime in the near future, so it’s definitely something to get excited about. Those that are rocking Wear OS 3 devices will be happy to know that there will be more choices with new sound and display modes that will be introduced in order to bolster the watch experience, providing new grayscale, color-correction modes, on top of a new mono audio mode.

In addition, there will be a new Google Keep widget on the Wear OS that will make it easier to manage and check off your to-do lists on your wrist. The new widget will also better replicate the smartphone experience, showing off the background color set for each note, along with reminders, and even images. Another improvement will come with Google Wallet with a new tap to pay animation, making it clearer that a transaction has gone through, bringing better clarity for the user and the merchant.

 

And finally, Fast Pair is coming to Chromebooks, so be prepared to easily connect wireless Bluetooth earbuds and headphones on the device or if you’ve already connected on your smartphone or tablet, Chromebooks will automatically connect to them going forward. So while there’s quite a bit here, just stay on the lookout for these changes. As a recap, today you’re going to get access to freehand notations in Google Drive, Google Meet noise cancellation, more emoji combination with Emoji Kitchen, and finally a great zoom feature for Chrome on Android.