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The latest automatic update is being rolled out and makes some important changes, at least according to the standards of an automatic update. You will now have the opportunity to see the first words of incoming messages upon arrival, and the music player has been renovated to change its appearance and a little functionality. It appears that this update is being distributed to a relatively small number of people currently.
What's up
Unofficial Changelog: (the stuff we found)
- Optional preview of messages
- Revised music player
Message preview
Left: Insights on. Right: Previews off.
For most of the life of Android Auto, many users wondered if the interface had been designed with as many restrictions as it had been made "too secure". Safe, that's for sure, but the restrictions were sometimes so dominant that users bent over backwards to work around the blocks become more dangerous than they would have been otherwise. But it seems that a better balance is being established since the development team opted for a lockable lock for the connected phone and added access to the full list of contacts earlier this year . At about the same time, there were indications that Google could also add visual glimpses of incoming messages, but only when the car was stopped. It turns out that this has become a reality and you can now activate it in the latest version.
The new message overview activation toggle is located in the Messaging group settings screen. Since this option is disabled by default, you will continue to see notifications without previewing messages unless the setting is intentionally changed.
There will surely still be questions about the safety of reading something on the screen while traveling, but keep in mind that these previews are supposed to appear only when the vehicle is not moving.
The length of what is shown is also quite short. As shown in the screenshot above, the popup notification can display about a short sentence, while the home screen card allows even less. This is certainly not enough for a dense conversation, but would be suitable for brief answers. Most importantly, it will be fantastic for those cases where someone will send a message with the name of a meeting place, an address or a portal code … All the things you will want to read at Rather than hearing them say of a synthesized voice.
Redesigned musical interface
New player screen and playlist view.
The other big change of this update is a visual and semi-functional change of the music player interface. The plans above are from the latest version while the plans below are from the previous update. The main player screen has not changed in a functional way, but the cover image is now displayed as a thumbnail on the left, the title and the artist being set right. The cover image is still used in the background, but it is heavily blurred in the new version.
Old screen of the player and display of the playlist.
The list screens are also updated with a dark theme and the search function occupies a larger position at the top. There is also a floating animated orange button on the far right that takes you right back to the player's screen.
Intermediate screen.
The floating button is not the only functional addition. If you take a closer look at the new reader's screen, you may notice that the hamburger menu has been replaced by an arrow. Tap to hide the player and display an interstitial screen containing the recommendations of the Music For Driving playlist. The hamburger menu is now accessible from this screen.
Between the changes made to the color palette and the implementation of these recommendations behind the reader, the interface is much more aesthetic. And if you like the recommendations that appear in Music For Driving's playlists, it's probably a good thing. However, I expect the majority of people to prefer their own playlists, which now require additional support.
- Thank you:
- Leo and Roberto Mezquia Jr
Tear down
The features described below are probably not available yet or are only available for a small percentage of users. Unless otherwise noted, do not expect to see these features if you install the apk. All screen captures and images are real unless otherwise indicated, and images are only changed to delete personal information.
Picture messages
To accompany the previews of messages discussed above, a new line has been added that will likely serve as an indicator of incoming text messages containing an image.
<chain first name="big_picture_message_text">Picture</chain>
In my tests, it seems that picture messages are actually ignored or treated as text messages if they also contain words. It therefore seems prudent to say that this is not yet operational.
I would not bet that images are actually displayed on the screen, it seems a little too ambitious at the moment, but I'm not sure that it can be excluded as long as the vehicle does not move.
External Keyboards / Telephone Keyboard
A couple of curious things have come up about keyboards with this update. First, a new line tells users that their phone's keypad is active, and the other line is a configuration file called input_keyboard_layout_with_external_keyboard.
<chain first name="phone_keyboard_is_active">Your phone's keypad is active</chain>
/xml/input_keyboard_layout_with_external_keyboard.xml
It is possible and even likely that these are used exclusively by developers for debugging purposes. There is also no evidence that these two elements are connected, they may just be about keyboards, but it is worth considering that they may be related to the capabilities of the user.
This could be the beginning of a keyboard displayed on the phone to allow a pbadenger to search for items difficult to find by voice, such as complicated names. Of course, there is no way to prevent drivers from using this kind of thing, which would clearly be a bad thing, but we are just speculating on that. could to be in development.
Download
The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing application. The cryptographic signature ensures that the file can be safely installed and has not been tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to transfer this download to your devices, which may take days, download it and install it as any other APK.
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